Analysis of The Fairy of the Fountains - Part I

WHY did she love her mother's so?
It hath wrought her wondrous wo.

Once she saw an armed knight
In the pale sepulchral light;
When the sullen starbeams throw
Evil spells on earth below:
And the moon is cold and pale,
And a voice is on the gale,
Like a lost soul's heavenward cry,
Hopeless in its agony.

He stood beside the castle-gate,
The hour was dark, the hour was late;
With the bearing of a king
Did he at the portal ring,
And the loud and hollow bell
Sounded like a Christian's knell.
That pale child stood on the wall,
Watching there, and saw it all.
Then she was a child as fair
As the opening blossoms are:
But with large black eyes, whose light
Spoke of mystery and might.
    The stately stranger's head was bound
With a bright and golden round;
Curiously inlaid, each scale
Shone upon his glittering mail;
His high brow was cold and dim,
And she felt she hated him.
Then she heard her mother's voice,
Saying, ' 'Tis not at my choice!
'Wo for ever, wo the hour,
'When you sought my secret bower,
'Listening to the word of fear,
'Never meant for human ear.
'Thy suspicion's vain endeavour,
'Wo! wo! parted us for ever.'

Still the porter of the hall
Heeded not that crown'd knight's call.
When a glittering shape there came,
With a brow of starry flame;
And he led that knight again
O'er the bleak and barren plain.
He flung, with an appealing cry,
His dark and desperate arms on high;
And from Melusina's sight
Fled away through thickest night.
    Who has not, when but a child,
Treasured up some vision wild:
Haunting them with nameless fear,
Filling all they see or hear,
In the midnight's lonely hour,
With a strange mysterious power?
So a terror undefined
Entered in that infant mind;—
A fear that haunted her alone,
For she told her thought to none.

Years passed on, and each one threw,
O'er those walls a deeper hue;
Large and old the ivy leaves
Heavy hung around the eaves,
Till the darksome rooms within
Daylight never entered in.
And the spider's silvery line
Was the only thing to shine.
    Years past on,—the fair child now
Wore maiden beauty on her brow—
Beauty such as rarely flowers
In a fallen world like ours.
She was tall;—a queen might wear
Such a proud imperial air;
She was tall, yet when unbound,
Swept her bright hair to the ground,
Glittering like the gold you see
On a young laburnum tree.
Yet her eyes were dark as night,
Melancholy as moonlight,
With the fierce and wilder ray
Of a meteor on its ray.
Lonely was her childhood's time,
Lonelier was her maiden prime;
And she wearied of the hours
Wasted in those gloomy towers;
Sometimes through the sunny sky
She would watch the swallows fly;
Making of the air a bath,
    In a thousand joyous rings:
She would ask of them their path,
    She would ask of them their wings.
Once her stately mother came,
With her dark eye's funeral flame,
And her cheek as pale as death,
And her cold and whispering breath;
With her sable garments bound
By a mystic girdle round,
Which, when to the east she turned,
With a sudden lustre burned.
Once that ladye, dark and tall,
Stood upon the castle wall;
And she marked her daughter's eyes
Fix'd upon the glad sunrise,
With a sad yet eager look,
Such as fixes on a book
Which describes some happy lot,
Lit with joys that we have not.
And the thought of what has been,
    And the thought of what might be,
Makes us crave the fancied scene,
    And despise reality.
'Twas a drear and desert plain
Lay around their own domain;
But, far off, a world more fair
Outlined on the sunny air;
Hung amid the purple clouds,
With which early morning shrouds
All her blushes, brief and bright,
Waking up from sleep and night.
    In a voice so low and dread,
As a voice that wakes the dead;
Then that stately lady said:
'Daughter of a kingly line,—
'Daughter, too, of race like mine,—
'Such a kingdom had been thine;
'For thy father was a king,
'Whom I wed with word and ring.
'But in an unhappy hour,
'Did he pass my secret bower,—
'Did he listen to the word,
'Mortal ear hath never heard;
'From that hour of grief and pain
'Might we never meet again.
    'Maiden, listen to my rede,
'Punished for thy father's deed:
'Here, an exile I must stay,
'While he sees the light of day.
'Child, his race is mixed in thee,
'With mine own more high degree.
'Hadst thou at Christ's altar stood,
'Bathed in His redeeming flood;
'Thou of my wild race had known
'But its loveliness alone.
'Now thou hast a mingled dower,
'Human passion—fairy power.
'But forefend thee from the last:
'Be its gifts behind thee cast.
'Many tears will wash away
'Mortal sin from mortal clay.
'Keep thou then a timid eye
'On the hopes that fill yon sky;
'Bend thou with a suppliant knee,
'And thy soul yet saved may be;--
'Saved by Him who died to save
'Man from death beyond the grave.