A Call To Arms Read Online Free Page B

uncommon degree.
    Half an hour passed, perhaps more, during which Hervey was interrupted only by a manservant bringing him champagne. And from the first moments with Alastor – ‘the demon spirit of solitude’ – he recognized that the poetry stood comparison to any he had read. Equal, certainly, to Coleridge and Keats in the pleasure the words themselves gave, and equal in some respects even to Milton in heroic invention. He did not know how much it truly told him of the man, however. It seemed, in fact, to speak most aptly to his own condition – and so well, that he found himself reading lines aloud, twice over:
‘… wildly he wandered on,
‘Day after day a weary waste of hours,
‘Bearing within his life the brooding care
‘That ever fed on its decaying flame.’
     
    And he marvelled at the poet’s economy in describing what he himself could barely admit.
‘And now his limbs were lean; his scattered hair
‘Sered by the autumn of strange suffering
‘Sung dirges in the wind; his listless hand
‘Hung like dead bone within its withered skin;’
     
    He shivered, almost, as he spoke this last.
‘Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone—’
     
    But it was Shelley himself who spoke the culminating lines:
‘As in a furnace burning secretly,
‘From his dark eyes alone.’
     
    Hervey looked up.
    ‘You approve of my philosophy, Captain Hervey?’ asked the poet, smiling with some pride.
    ‘I am no longer captain, as I explained this morning. And I should have to read much more before I were able to make any worthy remark.’ Even as he spoke, Hervey heard the stuffed shirt and inwardly he groaned.
    But Shelley seemed only diverted by his reserve, and by what heconsidered to be further evidence of sensibility. ‘Come with me tomorrow,’ he said, on an impulse. ‘To my favourite place in all of Rome.’
    Hervey was intrigued. ‘Where?’
    ‘The place I hide from the world, and work.’
    Shelley’s eagerness could compel. Indeed, Hervey did not imagine he had met a more compelling man. ‘I must make sure my sister will be content in my absence, but for myself I should say that I would deem it an honour.’
    That compelling way also took Hervey into the music room, where he saw that Elizabeth was very agreeably engaged and smiling. And, he told himself, if Elizabeth could be so diverted, then perhaps his previous withdrawal was needless as well as selfish.
    Next morning, Hervey left his lodgings in Via Babuino a little before a quarter to nine to walk by way of the Piazza di Spagna and Via Frattina to the Via del Corso. All along Frattina the sun was full in his eyes, and his progress was slow. As a rule he found Frattina an easier street to negotiate at this hour than Condotti or Borgognona, with their shops and stalls and hawkers; but even by this route he could advance but slowly this morning, so that he had to step out along the Corso to make his appointment on time. Only when he collided at full tilt with a ribbon-seller did it occur to him that he was not bound by any military obligation to be so exactly punctual. He caught but little of what the woman said, except that some of the ribbons, having fallen to the ground, were ruined. He stumbled in French and his few words of Italian to make amends, watched by a growing number of passers-by, and soon found himself with a good number of the fallen ribbons in exchange for more scudi than he supposed was strictly necessary. The immediate outcome was that he reached the Palazzo Verospi at ten minutes past nine, his hands and pockets full of brightly coloured streamers.
    Shelley greeted him with an eager smile and an extravagant handshake. ‘I was afeard you would come very precisely on your hour as a military man and find me ill-prepared, for I could not lay hands on my notebook. But now I have it and we may leave at once. What do you intend with those ribbons?’
    Hervey explained their provenance. ‘I thought I might take them for my sister. She was