DOI Artikel:
Gilchrist, Robert Murray: The crimson weaver
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27805#0274
The Crimson Weaver
270
So we passed on, but the bridge-keeper took no heed of the
coins. For awhile we heard her bellowed sighs issuing from the
openings of her den.
Strangely enough, the tenour of our talk changed from the
moment that we left the bridge. He had been telling me of the
Platonists, but when our feet pressed the sun-dried grass I was
impelled to question him of love. It was the first time I had
thought of the matter.
“How does passion first touch a man’s life?” I asked, laying
my hand on his arm.
His ruddy colour faded, he smiled wryly.
“You divine what passes in my brain,” he replied. “I also
had begun to meditate.But I may not tell you.In
my boyhood—I was scarce older than you at the time—I loved the
true paragon. ’Twere sacrilege to speak of the birth of passion.
Let it suffice that ere I tasted of wedlock the woman died, and
her death sealed for ever the door of that chamber of my heart.
.... Yet, if one might see therein, there is an altar crowned
with ever-burning tapers and with wreaths of unwithering
asphodels.”
By this time we had reached the skirt of a yew-forest, traversed
in every direction by narrow paths. The air was moist and
heavy, but ever and anon a light wind touched the tree-tops and
bowed them, so that the pollen sank in golden veils to the ground.
Everywhere we saw half-ruined fountains, satyrs vomiting
senilely, nymphs emptying wine upon the lambent flames of
dying phoenixes, creatures that were neither satyrs nor nymphs,
nor gryphins, but grotesque adminglings of all, slain by one
another, with water gushing from wounds in belly and thigh.
At length the path we had chosen terminated beside an
oval mere that was surrounded by a colonnade of moss-grown
arches.
270
So we passed on, but the bridge-keeper took no heed of the
coins. For awhile we heard her bellowed sighs issuing from the
openings of her den.
Strangely enough, the tenour of our talk changed from the
moment that we left the bridge. He had been telling me of the
Platonists, but when our feet pressed the sun-dried grass I was
impelled to question him of love. It was the first time I had
thought of the matter.
“How does passion first touch a man’s life?” I asked, laying
my hand on his arm.
His ruddy colour faded, he smiled wryly.
“You divine what passes in my brain,” he replied. “I also
had begun to meditate.But I may not tell you.In
my boyhood—I was scarce older than you at the time—I loved the
true paragon. ’Twere sacrilege to speak of the birth of passion.
Let it suffice that ere I tasted of wedlock the woman died, and
her death sealed for ever the door of that chamber of my heart.
.... Yet, if one might see therein, there is an altar crowned
with ever-burning tapers and with wreaths of unwithering
asphodels.”
By this time we had reached the skirt of a yew-forest, traversed
in every direction by narrow paths. The air was moist and
heavy, but ever and anon a light wind touched the tree-tops and
bowed them, so that the pollen sank in golden veils to the ground.
Everywhere we saw half-ruined fountains, satyrs vomiting
senilely, nymphs emptying wine upon the lambent flames of
dying phoenixes, creatures that were neither satyrs nor nymphs,
nor gryphins, but grotesque adminglings of all, slain by one
another, with water gushing from wounds in belly and thigh.
At length the path we had chosen terminated beside an
oval mere that was surrounded by a colonnade of moss-grown
arches.