The Enchanted Garden of Barganax

This scene finds the Duke painting in the enchanted garden. It introduces Dr. Vandermast, a member of the Duke's court, a philosopher, sophist, and magician, who is gifted in returning unintelligible reply on any manner of subject (although he does not appear in this passage).

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That third morning after that coming of the galloping horseman to Mornagay, Duke Barganax was painting in his privy garden in Zayana in the southland: that garden where it is everlasting afternoon. There the low sun, swinging a level course at about that pitch which Antares reaches at his highest southing in an English May-night, filled the soft air with atomies of sublimated gold, wherein all seen things became, where the beams touched them, golden: a golden sheen on the lake’s unruffled waters beyond the parapet, gold burning in the young foliage of the oak-woods that clothed the circling hills; and, in the garden, fruits of red and yellow gold hanging in the gold-spun leafy darkness of the strawberry-trees, a gilding shimmer of it in the stone of the carven bench, a gilding of every tiny blade on the shaven lawn, a glow to deepen all colours and to ripen every sweetness: gold faintly warming the proud pallour of Fiorinda’s brow and cheek, and thrown back in sudden gleams from the jet-black smoothness of her hair.
‘Would you be ageless and deathless for ever, madam, were you given that choice?’ said the Duke, scraping away for the third time the colour with which he had striven to match, for the third time unsuccessfully, the unearthly green of that lady’s eyes.
‘I am this already’ answered she with unconcern....

She had not stirred; yet, to his eye now, all was altered. As some tyrannous and triumphant phrase in a symphony returns, against all expectation, hushed to starved minor harmonies or borne on the magic welling moon-notes of the horn, a shuddering tenderness, a dying flame; such-like, and so moving, was the transfiguration that seemed to have come upon that lady: her beauty grown suddenly to a thing to choke the breath, piteous like a dead child’s toys: the bloom on her cheek more precious than kingdoms, and less perdurable than the bloom on a butterfly’s wing. She was turned side-face towards him; and now, scarce to be perceived, her head moved with the faintest dim recalling of that imperial mockery of soft laughter that he knew so well; but he well saw that it was no motion of laughter now, but the gallant holding back of tears....

‘Come’ said the Duke. ‘What shall it be then? Inspire my invention. Entertain ’em all to a light collation and, by cue taken at the last kissing-cup, let split their weasands, stab ’em all in a moment? Your noble brother amongst them, ’tis to be feared, madam; since him, with a bunch of others, I am to thank for these beggar-my-neighbour sleights and cozenage beyond example. Or shall’t be a grand night-piece of double fratricide? yours and mine, spitted on one spit like a brace of woodcock? We can proceed with the first to-day: for the other, well, I’ll think on’t.’
‘Are you indeed that prince whom reputation told me of,’ said she, ‘that he which did offend you might tremble with only thinking of it? And now, as hares pull dead lions by the beard—’...

As if spell-bound under the troublous sweet hesitation of the choriambics, she listened very still. Very still, and dreamily, and with so soft an intonation that the words seemed but to take voiceless shape on her ambrosial breath, she answered, like an echo:

Once more, Love, the limb-loosener, shaketh me:
Bitter-sweet, the dread Worm ineluctable.

——E.R. Eddison

Zimiamvia

‘Now I’ve angered you,’ said Amaury. ‘And yet, I said but true.’

As a wren twinkles in and out in a hedge-row, the demurest soft shadow of laughter came and went in Lessingham’s swift grey eyes. ‘What, were you reading me good counsel? Forgive me, dear Amaury: I lost the thread on’t. You were talking of my cousin, and the great King, and might-a-beens; but I was fallen a-dreaming, and marked you not.’

——Mistress of Mistresses

Much like the wanderer Lessingham, the prose of E.R. Eddison takes me fallen a-dreaming. With much of his works, I read each paragraph through at least twice; once to enjoy the beauty of the prose, and again to take in the meaning before moving on. Eddison is, by far, my favorite author, but most of his works have been out of print for some time.

I recently acquired the Ballantine edition of the Zimiamvian trilogy (1967 — 1969). I will be sharing short excerpts on occasion as the mood strikes.

A Vision of Zimiamvia

I will have gold and silver for my delight:
      Hangings of red silk, purfled and work’d in gold
With mantichores and what worse shapes of fright
      Terror Antiquus spawn’d in the days of old.

I will have columns of Parian vein’d with gems,
      Their capitals by Pheidias’ self design’d,
By his hand carv’d, for flowers with strong smooth stems,
      Nepenthe, Elysian Amaranth, and their kind.

I will have night: and the taste of a field well fought,
      And a golden bed made wide for luxury;
And there,— since else were all things else prov’d naught,—
      Bestower and hallower of all things: I will have Thee.

—Thee, and hawthorn time. For in that new birth though all
      Change, you I will have unchang’d: even that dress,
So fall’n to your hips as lapping waves should fall:
      You, cloth’d upon with your beauty’s nakedness.

The line of your flank: so lily-pure and warm:
      The globéd wonder of splendid breasts laid bare:
The gleam, like cymbals a-clash, when you lift your arm;
      And the faun leaps out with the sweetness of red-gold hair.

My dear,— my tongue is broken: I cannot see:
      A sudden subtle fire beneath my skin
Runs, and an inward thunder deafens me,
      Drowning mine ears: I tremble. — O unpin

Those pins of anachite diamond, and unbraid
      Those strings of margery-pearls, and so let fall
Your python tresses in their deep cascade
      To be your misty robe imperial. —

The beating of wings, the gallop, the wild spate,
      Die down. A hush resumes all Being, which you
Do with your starry presence consecrate,
      And peace of moon-trod gardens and falling dew.

Two are our bodies: two are our minds, but wed.
      On your dear shoulder, like a child asleep,
I let my shut lids press, while round my head
      Your gracious hands their benediction keep.

Mistress of my delights; and Mistress of Peace:
      O ever changing, never changing, You:
Dear pledge of our true love’s unending lease,
      Since true to you means to mine own self true.—

I will have gold and jewels for my delight:
      Hyacinth, ruby, and smaragd, and curtains work’d in gold
With mantichores and what worse shapes of fright
      Terror Antiquus spawn’d in the days of old.

Earth I will have, and the deep sky’s ornament:
      Lordship, and hardship, and peril by land and sea.—
And still, about cock-shut time, to pay for my banishment,
      Safe in the lowe of the firelight I will have Thee.

——E.R. Eddison