The Raven (Penguin) Read online

  “And now to business,” said the prime minister, a very fat man.

  “Yes,” said the king; “come, Hop-Frog, lend us your assistance. Characters, my fine fellow; we stand in need of characters—all of us—ha! ha! ha!” and as this was seriously meant for a joke, his laugh was chorused by the seven.

  Hop-Frog also laughed although feebly and somewhat vacantly.

  “Come, come,” said the king, impatiently, “have you nothing to suggest?”

  “I am endeavoring to think of something novel,” replied the dwarf, abstractedly, for he was quite bewildered by the wine.

  “Endeavoring!” cried the tyrant, fiercely; “what do you mean by that? Ah, I perceive. You are sulky, and want more wine. Here, drink this!” and he poured out another goblet full and offered it to the cripple, who merely gazed at it, gasping for breath.

  “Drink, I say!” shouted the monster, “or by the fiends—”

  The dwarf hesitated. The king grew purple with rage. The courtiers smirked. Trippetta, pale as a corpse, advanced to the monarch’s seat, and, falling on her knees before him, implored him to spare her friend.

  The tyrant regarded her, for some moments, in evident wonder at her audacity. He seemed quite at a loss what to do or say—how most becomingly to express his indignation. At last, without uttering a syllable, he pushed her violently from him, and threw the contents of the brimming goblet in her face.

  The poor girl got up the best she could, and, not daring even to sigh, resumed her position at the foot of the table.

  There was a dead silence for about a half a minute, during which the falling of a leaf, or of a feather, might have been heard. It was interrupted by a low, but harsh and protracted grating sound which seemed to come at once from every corner of the room.

  “What—what—what are you making that noise for?” demanded the king, turning furiously to the dwarf.

  The latter seemed to have recovered, in great measure, from his intoxication, and looking fixedly but quietly into the tyrant’s face, merely ejaculated:

  “I—I? How could it have been me?”

  “The sound appeared to come from without,” observed one of the courtiers. “I fancy it was the parrot at the window, whetting his bill upon his cage-wires.”

  “True,” replied the monarch, as if much relieved by the suggestion; “but, on the honor of a knight, I could have sworn that it was the gritting of this vagabond’s teeth.”

  Hereupon the dwarf laughed (the king was too confirmed a joker to object to any one’s laughing), and displayed a set of large, powerful, and very repulsive teeth. Moreover, he avowed his perfect willingness to swallow as much wine as desired. The monarch was pacified; and having drained another bumper with no very perceptible ill effect, Hop-Frog entered at once, and with spirit, into the plans for the masquerade.

  “I cannot tell what was the association of idea,” observed he, very tranquilly, and as if he had never tasted wine in his life, “but just after your majesty had struck the girl and thrown the wine in her face—just after your majesty had done this, and while the parrot was making that odd noise outside the window, there came into my mind a capital diversion—one of my own country frolics—often enacted among us, at our masquerades: but here it will be new altogether. Unfortunately, however, it requires a company of eight persons, and—”

  “Here we are!” cried the king, laughing at his acute discovery of the coincidence; “eight to a fraction—I and my seven ministers. Come! what is the diversion?”

  “We call it,” replied the cripple, “the Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs, and it really is excellent sport if well enacted.”

  “We will enact it,” remarked the king, drawing himself up, and lowering his eyelids.

  “The beauty of the game,” continued Hop-Frog, “lies in the fright it occasions among the women.”

  “Capital!” roared in chorus the monarch and his ministry.

  “I will equip you as ourang-outangs,” proceeded the dwarf; “leave all that to me. The resemblance shall be so striking, that the company of masqueraders will take you for real beasts—and of course, they will be as much terrified as astonished.”

  “O, this is exquisite!” exclaimed the king. “Hop-Frog! I will make a man of you.”

  “The chains are for the purpose of increasing the confusion by their jangling. You are supposed to have escaped, en masse, from your keepers. Your majesty cannot conceive the effect produced, at a masquerade, by eight chained ourang-outangs, imagined to be real ones by most of the company; and rushing in with savage cries, among the crowd of delicately and gorgeously habited men and women. The contrast is inimitable!”

  “It must be,” said the king: and the council arose hurriedly (as it was growing late), to put in execution the scheme of Hop-Frog.

  His mode of equipping the party as ourang-outangs was very simple, but effective enough for his purposes. The animals in question had, at the epoch of my story, very rarely been seen in any part of the civilized world; and as the imitations made by the dwarf were sufficiently beast-like and more than sufficiently hideous, their truthfulness to nature was thus thought to be secured.

  The king and his ministers were first encased in tight-fitting stockinet shirts and drawers. They were then saturated with tar. At this stage of the process, some one of the party suggested feathers; but the suggestion was at once overruled by the dwarf, who soon convinced the eight, by ocular demonstration, that the hair of such a brute as the ourang-outang was much more efficiently represented by flax. A thick coating of the latter was accordingly plastered upon the coating of tar. A long chain was now procured. First, it was passed about the waist of the king, and tied; then about another of the party, and also tied; then about all successively, in the same manner. When this chaining arrangement was complete, and the party stood as far apart from each other as possible, they formed a circle; and to make all things appear natural, Hop-Frog passed the residue of the chain in two diameters, at right angles, across the circle, after the fashion adopted, at the present day, by those who capture Chimpanzees, or other large apes, in Borneo.

  The grand saloon in which the masquerade was to take place, was a circular room, very lofty, and receiving the light of the sun only through a single window at top. At night (the season for which the apartment was especially designed,) it was illuminated principally by a large chandelier, depending by a chain from the centre of the sky-light, and lowered, or elevated, by means of a counter-balance as usual; but (in order not to look unsightly) this latter passed outside the cupola and over the roof.

  The arrangements of the room had been left to Trippetta’s superintendence; but, in some particulars, it seems, she had been guided by the calmer judgment of her friend the dwarf. At his suggestion it was that, on this occasion, the chandelier was removed. Its waxen drippings (which, in weather so warm, it was quite impossible to prevent) would have been seriously detrimental to the rich dresses of the guests, who, on account of the crowded state of the saloon, could not all be expected to keep from out its centre—that is to say, from under the chandelier. Additional sconces were set in various parts of the hall, out of the way; and a flambeau, emitting sweet odor, was placed in the right hand of each of the Caryatides that stood against the wall—some fifty or sixty altogether.

  The eight ourang-outangs, taking Hop-Frog’s advice, waited patiently until midnight (when the room was thoroughly filled with masqueraders) before making their appearance. No sooner had the clock ceased striking, however, than they rushed, or rather rolled in, all together—for the impediments of their chains caused most of the party to fall, and all to stumble as they entered.

  The excitement among the masqueraders was prodigious, and filled the heart of the king with glee. As had been anticipated, there were not a few of the guests who supposed the ferocious-looking creatures to be beasts of some kind in reality, if not precisely ourang-outangs. Many of the women swooned with affright; and had not the king taken the precaution to exclude all weapo
ns from the saloon, his party might soon have expiated their frolic in their blood. As it was, a general rush was made for the doors; but the king had ordered them to be locked immediately upon his entrance; and, at the dwarf’s suggestion, the keys had been deposited with him.

  While the tumult was at its height, and each masquerader attentive only to his own safety—(for, in fact, there was much real danger from the pressure of the excited crowd,)—the chain by which the chandelier ordinarily hung, and which had been drawn up on its removal, might have been seen very gradually to descend, until its hooked extremity came within three feet of he floor.

  Soon after this, the king and his seven friends having reeled about the hall in all directions, found themselves, at length, in its centre, and, of course, in immediate contact with the chain. While they were thus situated, the dwarf, who had followed closely at their heels, inciting them to keep up the commotion, took hold of their own chain at the intersection of the two portions which crossed the circle diametrically and at right angles. Here, with the rapidity of thought, he inserted the hook from which the chandelier had been wont to depend; and, in an instant, by some unseen agency, the chandelier-chain was drawn so far upward as to take the hook out of reach, and, as an inevitable consequence, to drag the ourang-outangs together in close connection, and face to face.

  The masqueraders, by this time, had recovered, in some measure, from their alarm; and, beginning to regard the whole matter as a well-contrived pleasantry, set up a loud shout of laughter at the predicament of the apes.

  “Leave them to me!” now screamed Hop-Frog, his shrill voice making itself easily heard through all the din. “Leave them to me. I fancy I know them. If I can only get a good look at them, I can soon tell who they are.”

  Here, scrambling over the heads of the crowd, he managed to get to the wall; when, seizing a flambeau from one of the Caryatides, he returned, as he went, to the centre of the room—leaped, with the agility of a monkey, upon the king’s head—and thence clambered a few feet up the chain—holding down the torch to examine the group of ourang-outangs, and still screaming: “I shall soon find out who they are!”

  And now, while the whole assembly (the apes included) were convulsed with laughter, the jester suddenly uttered a shrill whistle; when the chain flew violently up for about thirty feet—dragging with it the dismayed and struggling ourang-outangs, and leaving them suspended in mid-air between the sky-light and the floor. Hop-Frog, clinging to the chain as it rose, still maintained his relative position in respect to the eight maskers, and still (as if nothing were the matter) continued to thrust his torch down toward them, as though endeavoring to discover who they were.

  So thoroughly astonished was the whole company at this ascent, that a dead silence, of about a minute’s duration, ensued. It was broken by just such a low, harsh, grating sound, as had before attracted the attention of the king and his councillors when the former threw the wine in the face of Trippetta. But, on the present occasion, there could be no question as to whence the sound issued. It came from the fang-like teeth of the dwarf, who ground them and gnashed them as he foamed at the mouth, and glared, with an expression of maniacal rage, into the upturned countenances of the king and his seven companions.

  “Ah, ha!” said at length the infuriated jester. “Ah, ha! I begin to see who these people are, now!” Here, pretending to scrutinize the king more closely, he held the flambeau to the flaxen coat which enveloped him, and which instantly burst into a sheet of vivid flame. In less than half a minute the whole eight ourang-outangs were blazing fiercely, amid the shrieks of the multitude who gazed at them from below, horror-stricken, and without the power to render them the slightest assistance.

  At length the flames, suddenly increasing in virulence, forced the jester to climb higher up the chain, to be out of their reach; and, as he made this movement, the crowd again sank, for a brief instant, into silence. The dwarf seized his opportunity, and once more spoke:

  “I now see distinctly,” he said, “what manner of people these maskers are. They are a great king and his seven privy-councillors—a king who does not scruple to strike a defenceless girl, and his seven councillors who abet him in the outrage. As for myself, I am simply Hop-Frog, the jester—and this is my last jest.”

  Owing to the high combustibility of both the flax and the tar to which it adhered, the dwarf had scarcely made an end of his brief speech before the work of vengeance was complete. The eight corpses swung in their chains, a fetid, blackened, hideous, and indistinguishable mass. The cripple hurled his torch at them, clambered leisurely to the ceiling, and disappeared through the sky-light.

  It is supposed that Trippetta, stationed on the roof of the saloon, had been the accomplice of her friend in his fiery revenge, and that, together, they effected their escape to their own country; for neither was seen again.

  Poems

  Dreams

  Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream!

  My spirit not awak’ning till the beam

  Of an Eternity should bring the morrow:

  Yes! tho’ that long dream were of hopeless sorrow,

  ’Twere better than the dull reality

  Of waking life to him whose heart shall be,

  And hath been ever, on the chilly earth,

  A chaos of deep passion from his birth!

  But should it be—that dream eternally

  Continuing—as dreams have been to me

  In my young boyhood—should it thus be given,

  ’Twere folly still to hope for higher Heaven!

  For I have revell’d, when the sun was bright

  In the summer sky; in dreamy fields of light,

  And left unheedingly my very heart

  In climes of mine imagining—apart

  From mine own home, with beings that have been

  Of mine own thought—what more could I have seen?

  ’Twas once and only once and the wild hour

  From my remembrance shall not pass—some power

  Or spell had bound me—’twas the chilly wind

  Came o’er me in the night and left behind

  Its image on my spirit, or the moon

  Shone on my slumbers in her lofty noon

  Too coldly—or the stars—howe’er it was

  That dream was as that night wind—let it pass.

  I have been happy—tho’ but in a dream.

  I have been happy—and I love the theme—

  Dreams! in their vivid colouring of life—

  As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife

  Of semblance with reality which brings

  To the delirious eye more lovely things

  Of Paradise and Love—and all our own!

  Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.

  Spirits of the Dead

  I

  Thy soul shall find itself alone

  ’Mid dark thoughts of the gray tomb-stone—

  Not one, of all the crowd, to pry

  Into thine hour of secrecy:

  II

  Be silent in that solitude,

  Which is not loneliness—for then

  The spirits of the dead who stood

  In life before thee are again

  In death around thee—and their will

  Shall overshadow thee: be still.

  III

  The night—tho’ clear—shall frown—

  And the stars shall look not down,

  From their high thrones in the heaven,

  With light like Hope to mortals given—

  But their red orbs, without beam,

  To thy weariness shall seem

  As a burning and a fever

  Which would cling to thee for ever.

  IV

  Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish—

  Now are visions ne’er to vanish—

  From thy spirit shall they pass

  No more—like dew-drop from the grass.

  V

  The breeze—
the breath of God—is still

  And the mist upon the hill

  Shadowy—shadowy—yet unbroken,

  Is a symbol and a token—

  How it hangs upon the trees,

  A mystery of mysteries!—

  A Dream

  In visions of the dark night

  I have dreamed of joy departed—

  But a waking dream of life and light

  Hath left me broken-hearted.

  Ah! what is not a dream by day

  To him whose eyes are cast

  On things around him with a ray

  Turned back upon the past?

  That holy dream—that holy dream,

  While all the world were chiding,

  Hath cheered me as a lovely beam

  A lonely spirit guiding.

  What though that light, thro’ storm and night,

  So trembled from afar—

  What could there be more purely bright

  In Truth’s day-star?

  Sonnet—To Science

  Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!

  Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.

  Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,

  Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?

  How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,

  Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering

  To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,

  Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?

  Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?

  And driven the Hamadryad from the wood

  To seek a shelter in some happier star?

  Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,

  The Elfin from the green grass, and from me

  The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

  Fairy-Land

  Dim vales—and shadowy floods—

  And cloudy-looking woods,

  Whose forms we can’t discover

  For the tears that drip all over.