The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 2

THE ISLAND OF THE FAY

Nullus enim locus sine genio est.--_Servius_.

”LA MUSIQUE,” says Marmontel, in those ”Contes Moraux” (*1) which in allour translations, we have insisted upon calling ”Moral Tales,” as ifin mockery of their spirit--”la musique est le seul des talents quijouissent de lui-meme; tous les autres veulent des temoins.” He hereconfounds the pleasure derivable from sweet sounds with the capacityfor creating them. No more than any other talent, is that for musicsusceptible of complete enjoyment, where there is no second party toappreciate its exercise. And it is only in common with other talentsthat it produces effects which may be fully enjoyed in solitude. Theidea which the raconteur has either failed to entertain clearly, orhas sacrificed in its expression to his national love of point, is,doubtless, the very tenable one that the higher order of music isthe most thoroughly estimated when we are exclusively alone. Theproposition, in this form, will be admitted at once by those who lovethe lyre for its own sake, and for its spiritual uses. But there is onepleasure still within the reach of fallen mortality and perhaps onlyone--which owes even more than does music to the accessory sentimentof seclusion. I mean the happiness experienced in the contemplation ofnatural scenery. In truth, the man who would behold aright the glory ofGod upon earth must in solitude behold that glory. To me, at least, thepresence--not of human life only, but of life in any other form thanthat of the green things which grow upon the soil and are voiceless--isa stain upon the landscape--is at war with the genius of the scene. Ilove, indeed, to regard the dark valleys, and the gray rocks, andthe waters that silently smile, and the forests that sigh in uneasyslumbers, and the proud watchful mountains that look down upon all,--Ilove to regard these as themselves but the colossal members of one vastanimate and sentient whole--a whole whose form (that of the sphere)is the most perfect and most inclusive of all; whose path is amongassociate planets; whose meek handmaiden is the moon, whose mediatesovereign is the sun; whose life is eternity, whose thought is that ofa God; whose enjoyment is knowledge; whose destinies are lost inimmensity, whose cognizance of ourselves is akin with our own cognizanceof the animalculae which infest the brain--a being which we, inconsequence, regard as purely inanimate and material much in the samemanner as these animalculae must thus regard us.

Our telescopes and our mathematical investigations assure us onevery hand--notwithstanding the cant of the more ignorant of thepriesthood--that space, and therefore that bulk, is an importantconsideration in the eyes of the Almighty. The cycles in which the starsmove are those best adapted for the evolution, without collision, ofthe greatest possible number of bodies. The forms of those bodies areaccurately such as, within a given surface, to include the greatestpossible amount of matter;--while the surfaces themselves areso disposed as to accommodate a denser population than could beaccommodated on the same surfaces otherwise arranged. Nor is it anyargument against bulk being an object with God, that space itself isinfinite; for there may be an infinity of matter to fill it. Andsince we see clearly that the endowment of matter with vitality is aprinciple--indeed, as far as our judgments extend, the leading principlein the operations of Deity,--it is scarcely logical to imagine itconfined to the regions of the minute, where we daily trace it, and notextending to those of the august. As we find cycle within cycle withoutend,--yet all revolving around one far-distant centre which is theGod-head, may we not analogically suppose in the same manner, lifewithin life, the less within the greater, and all within the SpiritDivine? In short, we are madly erring, through self-esteem, in believingman, in either his temporal or future destinies, to be of more momentin the universe than that vast ”clod of the valley” which he tills andcontemns, and to which he denies a soul for no more profound reason thanthat he does not behold it in operation. (*2)

These fancies, and such as these, have always given to my meditationsamong the mountains and the forests, by the rivers and the ocean, atinge of what the everyday world would not fail to term fantastic. Mywanderings amid such scenes have been many, and far-searching, and oftensolitary; and the interest with which I have strayed through many a dim,deep valley, or gazed into the reflected Heaven of many a bright lake,has been an interest greatly deepened by the thought that I have strayedand gazed alone. What flippant Frenchman was it who said in allusionto the well-known work of Zimmerman, that, ”la solitude est une bellechose; mais il faut quelqu'un pour vous dire que la solitude est unebelle chose?” The epigram cannot be gainsayed; but the necessity is athing that does not exist.

It was during one of my lonely journeyings, amid a far distant regionof mountain locked within mountain, and sad rivers and melancholy tarnwrithing or sleeping within all--that I chanced upon a certain rivuletand island. I came upon them suddenly in the leafy June, and threwmyself upon the turf, beneath the branches of an unknown odorous shrub,that I might doze as I contemplated the scene. I felt that thus onlyshould I look upon it--such was the character of phantasm which it wore.

On all sides--save to the west, where the sun was about sinking--arosethe verdant walls of the forest. The little river which turned sharplyin its course, and was thus immediately lost to sight, seemed to haveno exit from its prison, but to be absorbed by the deep green foliage ofthe trees to the east--while in the opposite quarter (so it appeared tome as I lay at length and glanced upward) there poured down noiselesslyand continuously into the valley, a rich golden and crimson waterfallfrom the sunset fountains of the sky.

About midway in the short vista which my dreamy vision took in, onesmall circular island, profusely verdured, reposed upon the bosom of thestream.

So blended bank and shadow there

That each seemed pendulous in air--so mirror-like was the glassy water,that it was scarcely possible to say at what point upon the slope of theemerald turf its crystal dominion began.

My position enabled me to include in a single view both the eastern andwestern extremities of the islet; and I observed a singularly-markeddifference in their aspects. The latter was all one radiant harem ofgarden beauties. It glowed and blushed beneath the eyes of the slantsunlight, and fairly laughed with flowers. The grass was short,springy, sweet-scented, and Asphodel-interspersed. The trees were lithe,mirthful, erect--bright, slender, and graceful,--of eastern figure andfoliage, with bark smooth, glossy, and parti-colored. There seemed adeep sense of life and joy about all; and although no airs blew from outthe heavens, yet every thing had motion through the gentle sweepings toand fro of innumerable butterflies, that might have been mistaken fortulips with wings. (*4)

The other or eastern end of the isle was whelmed in the blackest shade.A sombre, yet beautiful and peaceful gloom here pervaded all things. Thetrees were dark in color, and mournful in form and attitude, wreathingthemselves into sad, solemn, and spectral shapes that conveyed ideas ofmortal sorrow and untimely death. The grass wore the deep tint of thecypress, and the heads of its blades hung droopingly, and hither andthither among it were many small unsightly hillocks, low and narrow,and not very long, that had the aspect of graves, but were not; althoughover and all about them the rue and the rosemary clambered. The shadeof the trees fell heavily upon the water, and seemed to bury itselftherein, impregnating the depths of the element with darkness. I fanciedthat each shadow, as the sun descended lower and lower, separated itselfsullenly from the trunk that gave it birth, and thus became absorbed bythe stream; while other shadows issued momently from the trees, takingthe place of their predecessors thus entombed.

This idea, having once seized upon my fancy, greatly excited it, and Ilost myself forthwith in revery. ”If ever island were enchanted,” saidI to myself, ”this is it. This is the haunt of the few gentle Fays whoremain from the wreck of the race. Are these green tombs theirs?--or dothey yield up their sweet lives as mankind yield up their own? In dying,do they not rather waste away mournfully, rendering unto God, little bylittle, their existence, as these trees render up shadow after shadow,exhausting their substance unto dissolution? What the wasting tree is tothe water that imbibes its shade, growing thus blacker by what it preysupon, may not the life of the Fay be to the death which engulfs it?”

As I thus mused, with half-shut eyes, while the sun sank rapidly torest, and eddying currents careered round and round the island, bearingupon their bosom large, dazzling, white flakes of the bark of thesycamore-flakes which, in their multiform positions upon the water, aquick imagination might have converted into any thing it pleased, whileI thus mused, it appeared to me that the form of one of those very Faysabout whom I had been pondering made its way slowly into the darknessfrom out the light at the western end of the island. She stood erectin a singularly fragile canoe, and urged it with the mere phantom of anoar. While within the influence of the lingering sunbeams, her attitudeseemed indicative of joy--but sorrow deformed it as she passed withinthe shade. Slowly she glided along, and at length rounded the islet andre-entered the region of light. ”The revolution which has just been madeby the Fay,” continued I, musingly, ”is the cycle of the brief year ofher life. She has floated through her winter and through her summer. Sheis a year nearer unto Death; for I did not fail to see that, as she cameinto the shade, her shadow fell from her, and was swallowed up in thedark water, making its blackness more black.”

And again the boat appeared and the Fay, but about the attitude of thelatter there was more of care and uncertainty and less of elastic joy.She floated again from out the light and into the gloom (which deepenedmomently) and again her shadow fell from her into the ebony water, andbecame absorbed into its blackness. And again and again she made thecircuit of the island, (while the sun rushed down to his slumbers), andat each issuing into the light there was more sorrow about her person,while it grew feebler and far fainter and more indistinct, and at eachpassage into the gloom there fell from her a darker shade, which becamewhelmed in a shadow more black. But at length when the sun hadutterly departed, the Fay, now the mere ghost of her former self, wentdisconsolately with her boat into the region of the ebony flood, andthat she issued thence at all I cannot say, for darkness fell over allthings and I beheld her magical figure no more.