On sped my rainbow, fast as light;
I flew as in a dream;
For glorious rose upon my sight
That child of Shower and Gleam.
Still bright on clouds of suffering dim
Shines that soft, solemn joy;
Nor care I now, how dense and grim
Disasters gather nigh;
I care not in this moment sweet,
Though all I have rushed o'er
Should come on pinion, strong and fleet,
Proclaiming vengeance sore."
It is clear the impediment of M. Héger's marriage is suggested in these
verses. But undeniable evidence as to Charlotte Brontë's having escaped
by flight what she considered a most dangerous temptation, is the fact
that we find she was influenced to pen these lines, wherein M. Héger
(Rochester) is likened to a wild pursuer of a "shower and gleam" nymph
who sped before him "fast as light" and "glorious rose upon his sight,"
by Montagu's reference, in _Gleanings in Craven_, to the story of a
Craven nymph a satyr pursued yet lost by her being changed into a
spring. Says Frederic Montagu:--
"In the _Polyolbion_, published in 1612, is the following
passage:--
In all my spacious tract let them (so wise) survey
Thy Ribble's rising banks, their worst and let them say;
At Giggleswick, where I a fountain can you show,
That eight times in a day is said to ebb and flow!
Who sometime was a Nymph, and in the mountains high
Of Craven, whose blue heads, for caps put on the sky,
Among the Oreads there, and Sylvans, made abode
(It was ere human foot upon these hills had trod),
Of all the mountain kind, and since she was most fair;
It was a Satyr's chance to see her silver hair
Flow loosely at her back, as up a cliff she clame,
Her beauties noting well, her features and her frame,
And after her he goes; which when she did espy,
Before him like the wind, the nimble Nymph did fly:
They hurry down the rocks, o'er hill and dale they drive,
To take her he doth strain, t' outstrip him she doth strive,
Like one his kind that knew, and greatly feared....
And to the Topic Gods by praying to escape,
They turned her to a Spring, which as she then did pant,
When, wearied with her course, her breath grew wond'rous scant,
Even as the fearful Nymph, then thick and short did blow,
Now made by them a Spring, so doth she ebb and flow."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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