I climb out of the musty bowels of the grave I dug on the Lawn, trembling with guilt over the damage I’ve inflicted upon my poet, and I pledge to immerse myself in love and beauty.
Love and beauty alone.
No more horror and death for now.
The gravest dangers for a man tormented by death are constant reminders of the grave.
Back in the country churchyard, I allow the spirit who wears his hair in a bow at his neck to court me, and, yes, even to kiss me beneath the swollen May moon. His lips are airy and scented with rosemary, and his hands mist the feathers of my head. His coat bedews my bosom and stomach through the fabric of my dress, and his ruffled cravat tickles my throat. He smells like wet grass. He likes to call me his “bonny darling,” a name that makes the feathers on the back of my neck bristle, but I do my best to fall into this world of love and beauty.
Love and beauty alone.
I find myself more enamored with a spirit named Jane—a vision of vaporous blue who wears her hair in a ribbon snood, just like Jane Stanard. Her moonstone eyes set my soul afire. Her rosebud lips look as soft as perfumed petals.
One night during a mood of boldness, I perch beside her on a tombstone carved of smooth white marble and ask, “May I kiss you?”
She offers her hand for me to kiss, but she won’t turn her lips my way.
My heart cracks into a thousand pieces.
I suddenly understand the agony Eddy suffers when he pines for the women he can’t have. Every inch of me aches.
I spend the rest of the night in the bell tower, lost in longing, unsure what to do now that I’ve allowed myself to taste the potent flavors of love and beauty.
Springtime steals into summer. Sunlight slices through the trees on balmy afternoons, and the Blue Ridge range to the west displays the stirring blue haze of its nomenclature. I wander the hills surrounding Charlottesville and familiarize myself with every ravine and hillcrest, every craggy oak and maple, and I learn who farms the lands, from the European immigrants to the descendants of Revolutionary War heroes to the free black families who’ve owned their properties since the century before. I glide behind the trees, so no one sees me, but I know from their shudders, their startled eyes, that they feel me roaming out here.
My poet, too, searches for beauty in the hills. His heartbeat gallops through the foliage, but O’Peale trails behind him during every excursion. Garland’s clumsy clods for feet snap apart twigs and trample down leaves, disturbing the peace of my Arcadia.
One July afternoon, when the bells of the university toll a gloomy dirge for the death of its founder, Mr. Jefferson, my poet journeys to the pond where I inspired him to write “The Lake.” I watch him from the upper boughs of an evergreen that towers over the forest. He’s carrying his portable writing box in his arms, a sight that piques my interest.
Garland creeps behind him—a gray panther on the prowl—a pest in paradise.
I climb up two more levels of the branches and hear Edgar invoke me in the pine-sweetened wind. Again, he recites the opening lines from William Hamilton Drummond’s The Giant’s Causeway:
“Come, lonely genius of my natal shore,
From cave or bower, wild glen, or mountain hoar;
And while by ocean’s rugged bounds I muse,
Thy solemn influence o’er my soul diffuse.”
“At the far end of a garden path made of stones,” I say into the breeze as a whisper intended for Edgar’s ears alone, “stands a woman in a white dress that clings to her legs. Her alabaster hands hold an azure plate covered in seeds, to which pigeons flock, and perch, and dine while they coo with rippling throats. The woman—this living Grecian statue—wears a ribbon snood over her brown curls, and she peers up with a smile and says in a tone that stops you from breathing and nearly renders you unconscious, ‘So, this must be Rob’s friend. I am delighted to meet you, Edgar. I admired your talented mother. I saw her but once on the stage, when I was a girl, but I remember her lovely face and voice. Come farther inside the garden.’ She lowers the plate to a bench and beckons with a wave. ‘Come meet Rob’s rabbits and pigeons and tell me all about your poetry.’
“A blaze of golden light flares in her direction,” I continue to whisper, “and the snood falls from her hair; her clusters of curls break free from their trappings. The garden blooms into the sunlit shores of ancient Troy, and again Helen beckons, while the salt from the sea sprays your lips and gulls cry overhead.”
Beside the pond in the pines, my poet dips his quill into a pot of fresh ink that spreads a rich and regal fragrance across the hills. Despite the merciless shadow of his satires stalking behind him, Edgar leans over his writing box, which he’s opened at the hinges and transformed into a lap desk, and, my God, he purrs the most exquisite lyrics I’ve ever heard:
“Helen, thy beauty is to me like Grecian . . . no, Phoenician . . . no . . .
Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o’er a perfum’d sea,
The weary way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore . . .”