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Readers sometimes ask me why no poetry in the style of Keats, Byron, Wordsworth, or the other great Romantic poets is being written today. My answer is that such poetry is in fact being written. Here, to bear witness, is "Edeline", a poetic fairytale in iambic pentameter with ABAB rhyme scheme. Whether you consider it archaic or revolutionary, a pale reflection of the Romantic era or the first light of a new dawn, we hope you will enjoy this enchanting Alpine idyll.
- Joel Van Valin
Up onto the wild, green mountain height,
Where sharp and clear the breath from breast is torn,
We rode as swift as wind in winter flight
To hunt the snowy ibex for his horn.
At the rear I rode, and as a föhn
From Alpine lee came flying, warm and dry,
I heard a yodeling song upon it blown:
The echo of a woman's haunting cry.
Forgetting horns, I hunting left behind
And turning trotted toward that wailing song,
For that unearthly voice so keen to find,
I would have ridden furlongs hard and long.
But maddened by that strange and southern gale,
Up reared my horse and threw me from his back.
On rocks I fell with misery and bale,
And all before my eyes and mind went black.
I woke and felt, still prone upon the ground,
A breeze like fingers soft bestir my hair,
But at a woman's gentle humming sound,
I knew the thing that touched me was not air.
I sat, though stiff, and saw a meadow wide
With woolly flowers bright as morning dew,
All white and gold upon the mountainside
Beneath a sky with wispy clouds and few.
Her crook across her lap, sat silent there
A dirndled goatherdess with windswept braids
And edelweiss like snowflakes in her hair,
Gathered from the rocks and green grass blades.
I found my voice, though from me it would hide:
"Was that your herding call upon the breeze?
But then, why is your flock not at your side?"
She smiled and smoothed the skirt upon her knees.
"It wasn't goats you heard me calling here."
Then glancing skyward, "I drove them away.
And now they're gone, the sky is bright and clear.
So while the sun is shining, let's be gay!"
She lightly leapt to feet, and lifted me,
Her hands as warm and soft as summer air.
I stammered, "But then, fraulein, could you be—?"
But wonderstruck, my question did not dare.
She laughed a laugh more warming than the föhns,
A laugh that would a frozen heart entice;
A sudden breeze came singing in the stones
And whispered in the woolly edelweiss.
"I am the cloudherdess, the leeward air
Who down the northern slopes in summer blows,
To pasture brings the weather wild and fair,
In springtime sheers the mountains of their snows."
Without another word she spun me round,
And waltzing with the wind among the flowers,
Across that mead there only was the sound
Of laughter and of merriment for hours.
We lingered there until the west'ring light
A melancholy coronet of red
Did cast against the oncoming of night:
A rosy alpenglow around her head.
Then standing still, she kissed me long and deep,
And sweet perfume and wild did round me waft.
And then a promise she would swear to keep
She whispered in a voice so warm and soft.
She said to me, "I'll call for you again
When up upon these slopes your party ride.
And yet from speech of me you must refrain;
From other men our meeting you must hide."
Then slipping from my arms, she danced away,
The flowers in her hair a pearly glow,
And took the footpath to her blue chalet,
The home to which no mortal man may go.
A while I stood there, staring in the night,
Still under the enchantment she had cast,
Then stumbled down the lee without a light.
The dark was deep when home I came at last.
When next we sat and sipped the amber foam,
My fellow hunters hounded me to say
To where and why I all the day to roam
Had left the party on their hunting way.
"My horse was mad. He turned and frenzied fled—
You know what fearsome föhns do to the mind.
He threw me, turned and bolted home," I said.
"All day I walked, the homeward path to find."
This tale they took, for though no other horse
Had felt the frenzy quite as much as mine,
A few had strayed and sought to quit the course
And wander witless to no clear design.
A fortnight passed before we rode again,
For none desired to dare the mountainside
In flying föhns and floods and driving rain,
And so in foothills drear must I abide.
I could not brave those mountain slopes alone,
For then I must explain to those below
What drove me to those heights of silent stone
Where did the wild uncanny breezes blow.
When next we chased that leaping mountain goat,
The voice came like a clarion on the wind:
Her yodeling call sent ringing from her throat
To prove her promise she did not rescind.
I turned and galloped gaily toward the cry,
My lissome ländler partner now to meet.
Though clouds were crowding in a silver sky,
I left my horse and ran on flying feet.
She caught me like an eddy in the air;
We whirled beneath the cloud formations queer.
She laughed as rainy wind bestirred her hair:
"You see today my woolly ones are here."
Again we danced and dallied till the dusk,
And many meetings more we had so glad,
While grumbling on the ground, they wondered, brusque,
How I alone among them went not mad.
And now as every hunt I left behind,
They wondered where I went, and soon discerned
It was a secret ladylove to find,
And bitterly they that idea spurned,
For föhns are more bewuthering than beer
To those on whom their favor settles not,
And so with torment, taunt, and cruel jeer,
They mithered me to take them to the spot
Or tell them how to find this airling wench
Who thought me fit to fondle and embrace.
They threw me down, my head hitting the bench,
And boxed me till the blood ran down my face.
We'd tussled many times before that day,
But never had I been so sore afeared
Of brothers on the rugged hunting way,
But wode they waxed in wind so wild and weird.
In schadenfreude laughed to hear my cries:
The luftmensch and the weakling of the folk.
The madness and the hatred in their eyes
Unloosed my coward's tongue; to plead I spoke.
I said I could not tell them where we met,
But only chased the call she cried to me,
Which I alone, it seemed, had heeded yet
On wind that wended down the northern lee.
I spoke these words and straightway felt the cost:
My mind now felt the föhnkrankheit descend.
I knew I had my fraulein's favor lost,
And up I leapt, my treachery to mend.
I fled my folk and spurred my sprinting steed
To climb the cliffs, as wild as howling wind,
The which I followed whither it should lead,
Though now bereft of voice as fierce it dinned.
Many miles I rode in fruitless quest,
The gelding from his galloping then freed,
And bootless went afoot without a rest,
Yet never did I find that mellow mead.
I wander still, and mourn the blow I dealt
To cause that merry maiden to depart.
Without her warming touch will never melt
The weltschmerz like a hoarfrost on my heart.
My yodeling echoed only by the stones,
Unmelted lies the blue unbroken ice.
Alone is borne to me upon the föhns
The mocking laughter of the edelweiss.