Classic Poem

I .

The mists, that mark the day's decline,
 Have cooled and lulled the purple air;
The bell, from Saint Cecilia's shrine,
 Hath tolled the evening hour of prayer;
With folded veil, and eyes that shed
Faint rays along the stones they tread,
And bosom stooped, and step subdued,
Came forth that ancient sisterhood;
Each bearing on her lips along
Part of the surge of a low song,—
A wailing requiem, wildly mixed
 With suppliant cry, how weak to win,
From home so far—from fate so fixed,
 A Spirit dead in sin!
Yet yearly must they meet, and pray
 For her who died—how long ago?
 How long—'twere only Love could know;
And she, ere her departing day,
Had watched the last of Love's decay;
Had felt upon her fading cheek
 None but a stranger's sighs;
Had none but stranger souls to seek
 Her death-thoughts in her eyes;
Had none to guard her couch of clay,
 Or trim her funeral stone,
Save those, who, when she passed away,
 Felt not the more alone.

II .

And years had seen that narrow spot
Of death-sod levelled and forgot,
Ere question came of record kept,
Or how she died—or where she slept.
The night was wild, the moon was late—
A lady sought the convent gate;
The midnight chill was on her breast,
 The dew was on her hair,
And in her eye there was unrest,
 And on her brow despair;
She came to seek the face, she said,
 Of one deep injured. One by one
The gentle sisters came, and shed
 The meckness of their looks upon
Her troubled watch. “I know them not,
 I know them not,” she murmured still:
“Are then her face—her form forgot?”
 “Alas! we lose not when we will
The thoughts of an accomplished ill;
The image of our love may fade,
But what can quench a victim's shade?

III .

“She comes not yet. She will not come.
 I seek her chamber;” and she rose
With a quick start of grief, which some
 Would have restrained; but the repose
Of her pale brow rebuked them. “Back,”
 She cried, “the path,—the place,—I know,—
Follow me not—though broad and black
The night lies on that lonely track.
There moves forever by my side
A darker spirit for my guide;
A broader curse—a wilder woe,
Must gird my footsteps as I go.”

IV .

Sternly she spoke, and, shuddering, sought
The cloister arches, marble-wrought,
That send, through many a trembling shaft
The deep wind's full, melodious draught,
Round the low space of billowy turf
Where funeral roses flash like surf,
O'er those who share the convent grave,
Laid each beneath her own green wave.

V .

From stone to stone she passed, and spelt
The letters with her fingers felt;
The stains of time are drooped across
Those mouldering names, obscure with moss;
The hearts where once they deeply dwelt,
With music's power to move and melt,
Are stampless too—the fondest few
Have scarcely kept a trace more true.

VI .

She paused at length beside a girth
 Of osiers overgrown and old;
And with her eyes fixed on the earth,
 Spoke slowly and from lips as cold
 As ever met the burial mould.

VII .

“I have not come to ask for peace
 From thee, thou unforgiving clay!
The pangs that pass—the throbs that cease
 From such as thou, in their decay,
Bequeath them that repose of wrath
 So dark of heart, so dull of ear,
That bloodless strength of sworded sloth,
 That shows not mercy, knows not fear,
And keeps its death-smile of disdain
Alike for pity, as for pain.
But, galled by many a ghastly link,
 That bound and brought my soul to thee,
I come to bid thy vengeance drink
 The wine of this my misery.
Look on me as perchance the dead
Can look; through soul and spirit spread
Before thee; go thou forth, and tread
The lone fields of my life, and see
 Those dark large flocks of restless pangs
They pasture, and the thoughts of thee,
 That shepherd them, and teach their fangs
To eat the green, and guide their feet
To trample where the banks are sweet
And judge betwixt us, which is best,
My sleepless torture, or thy rest;
 And which the worthier to be wept,
 The fate I caused, or that I kept.
 I tell thee, that my steps must stain
 With more than blood, their path of pain;
 And I would fold my weary feet
 More gladly in thy winding sheet,
 And wrap my bosom in thy shroud,
 And dash thy darkness on the crowd
Of terrors in my sight, and sheathe
 Mine ears from their confusion loud,
And cool my brain with cypress wreath
 More gladly from its pulse of blood,
 Than ever bride with orange bud
 Clouded her moony brow. Alas!
 This osier fence I must not pass.
 Wilt thou not thank me—that I dare
To feel the beams and drink the breath
 That curse me out of Heaven, nor share
 The cup that quenches human care,
  The sacrament of death;
 But yield thee this, thy living prey
 Of erring soul and tortured clay,
 To feed thee, when thou com'st to keep
 Thy watch of wrath around my sleep,
 Or turn the shafts of daylight dim,
 With faded breast and frozen limb?

VIII .

“Yet come, and be, as thou hast been,
 Companion ceaseless—not unseen,
 Though gloomed the veil of flesh between
 Mine eyes and thine, and fast and rife
 Around me flashed the forms of life:
 I knew them by their change—for one
 I did not lose, I could not shun,
 Through laughing crowd, and lighted room,
 Through listed field, and battle's gloom,
 Through all the shapes and sounds that press
 The Path, or wake the Wilderness;
 E'en when He came, mine eyes to fill,
 Whom Love saw solitary still,
 For ever, shadowy by my side,
 I heard thee murmur, watched thee glide;
 But what shall now thy purpose bar?
 The laughing crowd is scattered far,
 The lighted hall is left forlorn,
 The listed field is white with corn,
 And he, beneath whose voice and brow
 I could forget thee—is—as thou.”

IX .

She spoke, she rose, and from that hour,
 The peasant groups that pause beside
 The chapel walls at eventide,
 To catch the notes of chord and song
 That unseen fingers form, and lips prolong,
Have heard a voice of deeper power,
 Of wilder swell, and purer fall,
 More sad, more modulate, than all.
It is not keen, it is not loud,
 But ever heard alone,
As winds that touch on chords of cloud
 Across the heavenly zone,
Then chiefly heard, when drooped and drowned
In strength of sorrow, more than sound;
That low articulated rush
 Of swift, but secret passion, breaking
 From sob to song, from gasp to gush;
 Then failing to that deadly hush,
 That only knows the wilder waking—
 That deep, prolonged, and dream-like swell,
 So full that rose—so faint that fell,
 So sad—so tremulously clear—
 So checked with something worse than fear.
 Whose can they be?
 Go, ask the midnight stars, that see
 The secrets of her sleepless cell,
 For none but God and they can tell
 What thoughts and deeds of darkened choice
 Gave horror to that burning voice—
That voice, unheard save thus, untaught
 The words of penitence or prayer;
The grey confessor knows it not;
 The chapel echoes only bear
 Its burst and burthen of despair;
 And pity's voice hath rude reply,
 From darkened brow and downcast eye,
 That quench the question, kind or rash,
 With rapid shade, and reddening flash;
Or, worse, with the regardless trance
Of sealèd ear, and sightless glance,
That fearful glance, so large and bright,
That dwells so long, with heed so light,
When far within, its fancy lies,
Nor movement marks, nor ray replies,
Nor kindling dawn, nor holy dew
Reward the words that soothe or sue.

X .

Restless she moves; beneath her veil
 That writhing brow is sunk and shaded;
Its touch is cold—its veins are pale—
 Its crown is lost—its lustre faded;
Yet lofty still, though scarcely bright,
Its glory burns beneath the blight
Of wasting thought, and withering crime,
And curse of torture and of time;
Of pangs—of pride, endured—degraded—
Of guilt unchecked, and grief unaided:
Her sable hair is slightly braided,
Warm, like south wind, its foldings float
Round her soft hands and marble throat;
How passive these, how pulseless this,
 That love should lift, and life should warm!
Ah! where the kindness, or the kiss,
 Can break their dead and drooping charm!
Perchance they were not always so:
 That breast hath sometimes movement deep,
Timed like the sea that surges slow
Where storms have trodden long ago;
 And sometimes, from their listless sleep,
Those hands are harshly writhed and knit,
As grasping what their frenzied fit
Deemed peace to crush, or death to quit.
And then the sisters shrink aside;
 They know the words that others hear
Of grace, or gloom—to charm or chide,
 Fall on her inattentive ear,
As falls the snowflake on the rock,
That feels no chill, and knows no shock;
Nor dare they mingle in her mood,
So dark, and dimly understood;
 And better so, if, as they say,
'Tis something worse than solitude:
 For some have marked, when that dismay
 Had seemed to snatch her soul away,
That in her eye's unquietness
There shone more terror than distress;
And deemed they heard, when soft and dead,
By night they watched her sleepless tread,
Strange words addressed, beneath her breath,
As if to one who heard in death,
And, in the night wind's sound and sigh,
Imagined accents of reply.

XI .

The sun is on his western march,
His rays are red on shaft and arch;
With hues of hope their softness dyes
The image with the lifted eyes,
Where, listening still, with trancèd smile,
Cecilia lights the glimmering aisle;
So calm the beams that flushed her rest
Of ardent brow, and virgin breast
Whose chill they pierced, but not profaned,
And seemed to stir, what scarce they stained,
So warm the life, so pure the ray:
Such she had stood, ere snatched from clay,
When sank the tones of sun and sphere,
Deep melting on her mortal ear;
And angels stooped, with fond control,
To write the rapture on her soul.

XII .

Two sisters, at the statue's feet,
Paused in the altar's arched retreat,
As risen but now from earnest prayer—
One aged and grey—one passing fair;
In changeful gush of breath and blood,
Mute for a time the younger stood;
Then raised her head and spoke: the flow
Of sound was measured, stern, and slow;

XIII .

“Mother! thou sayest she died in strife
 Of heavenly wrath, and human woe;
For me, there is not that in life
 Whose loss could ask, or love could owe
 As much of pang as now I show;
But that the book which angels write
 Within men's spirits day by day
That diary of judgment-light
 That cannot pass away,
Which, with cold ear and glazing eye,
Men hear and read before they die,
Is open now before me set;
Its drifting leaves are red and wet
With blood and fire, and yet, methought,
Its words were music, were they not.
Written in darkness.
I confess!
Say'st thou? The sea shall yield its dead,
 Perchance my spirit its distress;
Yet there are paths of human dread
That none but God should trace or tread;
Men judge by a degraded law;
 With Him I fear not: He who gave
The sceptre to the passion, saw
 The sorrow of the slave.
He made me, not as others are,
 Who dwell, like willows by a brook,
That see the shadow of one star
 Forever with serenest look
Lighting their leaves,—that only hear
Their sun-stirred boughs sing soft and clear,
And only live, by consciousness
Of waves that feed, and winds that bless.
Me—rooted on a lonely rock,
 Amidst the rush of mountain rivers,
He, doomed to bear the sound and shock
Of shafts that rend and storms that rock,
 The frost that blasts, and flash that shivers;
And I am desolate and sunk.
A lifeless wreck—a leafless trunk,
Smitten with plagues, and seared with sin,
And black with rottenness within,
But conscious of the holier will
That saved me long, and strengthens still.

XIV.

Mine eyes are dim, they scarce can trace
The rays that pierce this lonely place;
But deep within their darkness dwell
A thousand thoughts they knew—too well.
Those orbed towers obscure and vast,
That light the Loire with sunset last;
Those fretted groups of shaft and spire
That crest Amboise's cliff with fire,
When, far beneath, in moonlight fail
The winds that shook the pausing sail;
The panes that tint with dyes divine
The altar of St. Hubert's shrine;
The very stone on which I knelt;
 When youth was pure upon my brow,
Though word I prayed, or wish I felt
 I scarce remember now.
Methought that there I bowed to bless
 A warrior's sword—a wanderer's way:
Ah! nearer now, the knee would press
 The heart for which the lips would pray.
The thoughts were meek, the words were low—
 I deemed them free from sinful stain;
It might be so. I only know
 These were unheard, and those were vain.

XV.

“That stone is raised;—where once it lay
Is built a tomb of marble grey:
Asleep within the sculptured veil
Seems laid a knight in linkèd mail;
Obscurely laid in powerless rest,
 The latest of his line,
Upon his casque he bears no crest,
 Upon his shield no sign.
I've seen the day when through the blue
Of broadest heaven his banner flew,
And armies watched through farthest fight,
The stainless symbol's stormy light
 Wave like an angel's wing.
 Ah! now a scorned and scathèd thing,
It's silken folds the worm shall fret,
The clay shall soil, the dew shall wet,
Where sleeps the sword that once could save,
 And droops the arm that bore;
Its hues must gird a nameless grave;
Nor wind shall wake, nor lance shall wave,
 Nor glory gild it more:
For he is fallen—oh! ask not how,
Or ask the angels that unlock
The inmost grave's sepulchral rock;
I could have told thee once, but now
'Tis madness in me all, and thou
Wouldst deem it so, if I should speak.
And I am glad my brain is weak;—
Ah, this is yet its only wrong,
To know too well—to feel too long.

XVI.

“But I remember how he lay
When the rushing crowd were all away;
And how I called, with that low cry
He never heard without reply;
And how there came no sound, nor sign,
And the feel of his dead lips on mine;
And when they came to comfort me,
I laughed, because they could not see
The stain of blood, or print of lance,
To write the tomb upon the trance.
I saw, what they had heeded not,
Above his heart a small black spot;
Ah, woe! I knew how deep within
That stamp of death, that seal of sin
Had struck with mortal agony
The heart so false—to all but me.

XVII.

“Mother, methinks my soul can say
It loved as well as woman's may;
And what I would have given, to gain
The answering love, to count were vain;
I know not—what I gave I know—
My hope on high, my all below.
But hope and height of earth and heaven,
Or highest sphere to angels given,
Would I surrender, and take up
The horror of this cross and cup
I bear and drink, to win the thought
That I had failed in what I sought.
Alas! I won—rejoiced to win
The love whose every look was sin,
Whose every dimly worded breath
Was but the distant bell of death
For her who heard, for him who spoke.
 Ah! though those hours were swift and few,
The guilt they bore, the vow they broke,
 Time cannot punish—nor renew.

XVIII.

“They told me long ago that thou
 Hadst seen, beneath this very shade
Of mouldering stone that wraps us now,
 The death of her whom he betrayed.
Thine eyes are wet with memory,—
In truth 'tis fearful sight to see
E'en the last sands of sorrow run,
Though the fierce work of death be done,
And the worst woe that fate can will
Bids but its victim to be still.
But I beheld the darker years
 That first oppressed her beauty's bloom;
The sickening heart and silent tears
 That asked and eyed her early tomb;
 I watched the deepening of her doom,
As, pulse by pulse, and day by day,
The crimson life-tint waned away
And timed her bosom's quickening beat,
 That hastened only to be mute,
And the short tones, each day more sweet,
 That made her lips like an Eolian lute,
When winds are saddest; and I saw
The kindling of the unearthly awe
That touched those lips with frozen light,
The smile, so bitter, yet so bright,
Which grief, that sculptured, seals its own,
Which looks like life, but stays like stone;
Which checks with fear the charm it gives,
And loveliest burns, when least it lives,—
All this I saw. Thou canst not guess
How woman may be merciless.
One word from me had rent apart
The chains that chafed her dying heart:
Closer I clasped the links of care,
And learned to pity—not to spare.

XIX.

She might have been avenged; for, when
Her woe was aidless among men,
And tooth of scorn and brand of shame
Had seared her spirit, soiled her name,
There came a stranger to her side,
 Or—if a friend, forgotten long,
For hearts are frail, when hands divide.
There were who said her early pride
 Had cast his love away with wrong;
 But that might be a dreamer's song.
He looked like one whom power or pain
 Had hardened, or had hewn, to rock
That could not melt nor rend again,
 Unless the staff of God might shock,
And burst the sacred waves to birth
That deck with bloom the Desert's dearth—
That dearth, that knows nor breeze, nor balm,
 Nor feet that print, nor sounds that thrill,
Though cloudless was his soul, and calm,
 It was the Desert still;
And blest the wildest cloud had been
That broke the desolate serene,
And kind the storm, that farthest strewed
Those burning sands of solitude.

XX.

“Darkly he came, and in the dust
 Had writ, perchance, Amboise's shame;
I knew the sword he drew was just,
 And in my fear a fiend there came;
It deepened first, and then derided
 The madness of my youth;
I deemed not that the God, who guided
 The battle blades in truth,
Could gather from the earth the guilt
Of holy blood in secret spilt.

XXI.

“I watched at night the feast flow high;
I kissed the cup he drank to die;
I heard at morn the trumpet call
Leap cheerily round the guarded wall;
And laughed to think how long and clear
The blast must be, for him to hear.
He lies within the chambers deep,
 Beneath Amboise's chapel floor,
Where slope the rocks in ridges steep,
 Far to the river shore;
Where thick the summer flowers are sown,
And, even within the deadening stone,
 A living ear can catch the close
Of gentle waves forever sent,
To soothe, with lull and long lament,
 That murdered knight's repose:
And yet he sleeps not well;—but I
 Am wild, and know not what I say;—
My guilt thou knowest—the penalty
 Which I have paid, and yet must pay,
 Thou canst not measure. O'er the day
I see the shades of twilight float—
My time is short. Believest thou not?
I know my pulse is true and light,
My step is firm, mine eyes are bright;
Yet see they—what thou canst not see,
The open grave, deep dug for me;
The vespers we shall sing to-night
 My burial hymn shall be:
But what the path by which I go,
My heart desires yet dreads to know.
But this remember, (these the last
 Of words I speak for earthly ear;
Nor sign nor sound my soul shall cast,
 Wrapt in its final fear):
For him, forgiving, brave and true,
Whom timeless and unshrived I slew,
For him be holiest masses said,
And rites that sanctify the dead,
With yearly honor paid.
For her, by whom he was betrayed,
Nor blood be shed, nor prayer be made,—
The cup were death—the words were sin,
To judge the soul they could not win,
And fall in torture o'er the grave
Of one they could not wash, nor save.”
*****

XXII.

The vesper beads are told and slipped,
The chant has sunk by choir and crypt.
That circle dark—they rise not yet;
With downcast eyes, and lashes wet,
 They linger, bowed and low;
They must not part before they pray
For her who left them on this day
 How many years ago!

XXIII.

They knelt within the marble screen,
Black-robed and moveless, hardly seen,
Save by their shades that sometimes shook
 Along the quiet floor,
Like leaf-shades on a waveless brook
 When the wind walks by the shore.
The altar lights that burned between,
Were seven small fire-shafts, white and keen,
 Intense and motionless.
They did not shake for breeze nor breath,
 They did not change, nor sink, nor shiver;
They burned as burn the barbs of death
 At rest within their angel's quiver.
From lip to lip, in chorus kept,
The sad sepulchral music swept,
While one sweet voice unceasing led:
Were there but mercy for the dead,
Such prayer had power to soothe—to save—
Ay, even beneath the binding grave;
So pure the springs of faith that fill
 The spirit's fount, at last unsealed.
A corpse's ear, an angel's will,
 That voice might wake, or wield.
Keener it rose, and wilder yet,
The lifeless flowers that wreathe and fret
Column and arch with garlands white,
Drank the deep fall of its delight,
Like purple rain at evening shed
 On Sestri's cedar-darkened shore,
When all her sunlit waves lie dead,
And far along the mountains fled,
 Her clouds forget the gloom they wore,
Till winding vale and pasture low
Pant underneath their gush and glow;
So sank, so swept, on earth and air,
That single voice of passioned prayer.
The hollow tombs gave back the tone,
The roof's grey shafts of stalwart stone
Quivered like chords, the keen night blast
Grew tame beneath the sound. Tis past:
That failing cry—how feebly flung!
What charm is laid on her who sung?
 Slowly she rose—her eyes were fixed
On the void, penetrable air;
 And in their glance was gladness mixed
With terror, and an under glare:
What human soul shall seize or share
 The thoughts it might avow?
It might have been—ah! is it now—
 Devotion?—or despair?

XXIV.

With steps whose short white flashes keep
 Beneath the shade of her loose hair,
With measured pace, as one in sleep
 Who heareth music in the air,
She left the sister's circle deep
Their anxious eyes of troubled thought
Dwelt on her but she heeded not;
Fear struck and breathless as they gazed,
 Before her steps their ranks divided;
Her hand was given—her face was raised
 As if to one who watched and guided—
Her form emerges from the shade;
Lo! she will cross, where full displayed
Against the altar light 'tis thrown;
She crosses now—but not alone.
Who leads her? Lo! the sisters shrink
Back from that guide with limbs that sink,
And eyes that glaze, and lips that blench;
 For, seen where broad the beams were cast
By what it dimmed, but did not quench,
 A dark, veiled form there passed—
Veiled with the nun's black robe, that shed
Faint shade around its soundless tread;
Moveless and mute the folds that fell,
Nor touch can change, nor breeze repel.
Deep to the earth its head was bowed,
Its face was bound with the white shroud;
One hand upon its bosom pressed—
One seemed to lead its mortal guest;
The hand it held lay bright and bare,
Cold as itself, and deadly fair.
What oath had bound the fatal troth
Whose horror seems to seal them both?
Each powerless in the grasp they give,
This to release, and that to live.

XXV.

Like sister sails, that drift by night
 Together on the deep,
Seen only where they cross the light
 That pathless waves must pathlike keep
 From fisher's signal fire, or pharos steep.

XXVI.

Like two thin wreaths that autumn dew
 Hath framed of equal pacèd cloud,
 Whose shapes the hollow night can shroud,
Until they cross some caverned place
 Of moon illumined blue,
That live an instant, but must trace
Their onward way, to waste and wane
Within the sightless gloom again,
Where, scattered from their heavenly pride
Nor star nor storm shall gild or guide,—
So shape and shadow, side by side
The consecrated light had crossed.
Beneath the aisle an instant lost,
 Behold! again they glide
Where yonder moonlit arch is bent
Above the marble steps' descent,—
Those ancient steps, so steep and worn,
 Though none descend, unless it be
Bearing, or borne, to sleep, or mourn,
 The faithful or the free.
The shade yon bending cypress cast,
 Stirred by the weak and tremulous air,
Kept back the moonlight as they passed.
 The rays returned: they were not there.
Who follows? Watching still, to mark
If ought returned—(but all was dark)
Down to the gate, by two and three,
The sisters crept, how fearfully!
They only saw, when there they came,
Two wandering tongues of waving flame,
O'er the white stones, confusedly strewed
Across the field of solitude.