Chapter III: Part II (1)

The tale continued in the Convent grounds;
the same group of Nuns listening.

How softly have my limbs reposed!
Nor stormy sea, nor haunted land,
Nor sorcerer’s unhallowed wand,
Disturbed the opiate shades that closed
The sleepy avenues of sense;
And therefore I, without pretence
Of weariness or dream-wrought gloom,
My tale of yester-eve resume.

Together o’er the mystic Isle
We wandered many a sinuous mile.
’Twas midway in the month of June,
And rivulets with lisping rune,
And bowering trees of tender green,
And flowering shrubs their trunks between
Enticed our steps till gloaming gray
Upon the pathless forest lay.
Think not I journeyed void of fear;
Sir Roberval’s hot malediction
Like hurtling thunder sounded near;
Our steps the envious demons haunted,
And peeped, or seemed to peep and leer,
From rocky clefts and caverns drear.
But still defiantly, undaunted,
Eugene averred it had been held
By wise philosophers of eld
That all such sights and sounds are mere
Fantastic tricks of eye and ear,
And only meet for tales of fiction.
“Heed not,” he said, “the vicious threat,
’Twas but a ruffian’s empty talk,
The which I pray thou may’st forget
And half his evil purpose baulk.”
A silent doubt and grateful kiss
Was all I could oppose to this.
But firmer grew my steps. The air
Was laden with delicious balm;
Rich exhalations everywhere,
From pine and spruce and cedar grove,
And over all a dreamy calm,
An affluence of brooding love,
A palpable, beneficent
Sufficiency of blest content.

Amid the hours, in restful pause
We loitered on the moss-clad rocks,
And listened to the sober caws
Of lonely rooks, and watched thick flocks
Of pigeons passing overhead;
Or where the scarlet grosbeak sped,
A wingéd fire, through clumps of pine
Sent chasing looks of joy and wonder.
Blue violets and celandine,
And modest ferns that glanced from under
Gray-hooded boulders, seemed to say—
“O, tarry, gentle folk; O, stay,
For we are lonely in this wood,
And sigh for human sympathy
To cheer our days of solitude.”
Meek forest flowers, how dear to me!
I loved them, kissed them on the stem,
And felt that I must ever be
Secluded from the world like them.

The long-drawn shadows, eastward cast,
Admonished us that day was fast
Dissolving, and would soon be past;
And we must needs regain the spot
Where waited good Nanette our coming.
The chattering squirrel we heeded not,
Nor paused to list the partridge drumming.
The wedded bird was in her nest,
And knew from the suspended song
(A tribute to her listening ear)
That from the green boughs rustling near
Had trilled and warbled all day long,
A brief space only must she wait
The fondling of her chirping mate.
With some wise meaning, wise and deep
That from her eyes was fain to peep,
And wealth of words and lifted hands
Our thoughtful servitor, Nanette,
Gave kindly greeting ere we met.
“Come, children, follow me,” she said,
And silently the way she led
An arpent from the ocean sands,
Directly to a piny grove,
Where she with wondrous skill had wove
A double bower of evergreen,
Meet for a fairy king and queen.—
“There, tell your rosaries and take
A sabbath slumber; till you wake,
Nanette, hard by, will watchful stand,
With loaded arquebuse in hand,
Your trusty sentinel, for here
Some prowling beast may chance appear
On no good neighbour’s lawful quest;
To-morrow I can doze and rest.”—
Thus, voluble, my faithful Nurse.
Amazed, I stood and could not speak,
But kissed her on the brow and cheek,
And wept to think my Uncle’s curse
Should fall on her, so worn and bent,
So moved with every good intent.

A flushing joy it was to see
That double-chambered arbour fair,
Re-calling to my memory
The storied lore of things that were
My childhood’s moonlit witchery.
Next morn we sought the circling strand
And question made of wind and sea
If such a thing might ever be,
That, soon or late, from any land
Some friendly sail would come that way
And waft us thence: in vain, in vain!
The hollow wind had nought to say,
But, like a troubled ghost, passed by;—
The waste illimitable main
And awful silence of the sky
Vouchsafed no sign, made no reply.—
Oft times upon some lifted rock
That overhung the waves, we sate
And listened to the undershock
Whose sad persistency, like fate,
Made land and sea more desolate.

Again in lighter mood we trod
The yellow sands and pale-green sod
Strewn with innumerable shells,
In whose pink whorls and breathing cells
Beauty and wonder slept enshrined,
Like holy thoughts in a dreamer’s mind.
Of these sea-waifs an ample store
We gathered, and at twilight bore
The treasure to our sylvan home.

Once more the star encumbered dome
Of heaven its thrilling story told,
And Dian, lovely as of old,
Poured lavishly her pallid sheen
Upon that tranquil world of green;
Whose cool and dewy depths, now rife
With luminous and noiseless life,
Responded wide; the fire-fly race
In myriads lit their tiny lamps;
As an army’s countless camps
The warder in some woody place
At nightfall on his watch may trace;
So gleamed and flashed those mimic lamps.

The third day came. From shore to shore,
Adventurous ever more and more,
Our penal Isle we wandered o’er.—
Which way our roving fancy led,
A wilding beauty largely spread
Rewarded our ambitious feet,
And made our banishment too sweet
For further censure or repining.
Now culling flowers of dainty dyes,
Now chasing gaudy butterflies,
And now on herbaged slopes reclining,
Where purple blooms of lilac trees,
And sultry hum of hermit bees
Disarmed the hours of weariness.—
Nor can you fail, dear friends, to guess
That time for dalliance we found,—
And if we loved to an excess
In many a long involved caress,
O think how we were cribbed and bound.—
Lush nature and necessity,
As witnessed by the Saints above,
In one delicious circle wove
The pulsings of our destiny.

The great rude world was far away,
And like a troubled vision lay
Outside our thoughts; its cold deceits,
The babble of its noisy streets,
And all the selfish rivalry
That courts and castles propagate
Were alien to our new estate.—
A fragment of propitious sky,
Whereon a puff of cloud might lie,
Through verdured boughs o’er-arching seen,
And glimpses of the sea between
Far stretches of majestic trees,
Such peaceful sanctities as these
Were our abiding joyance now.

Cheerily and with lifted brow
Eugene led on, where tamaracs grew,
And where tall elms their shadows threw
Athwart a little glen wherein
A virgin brook seemed glad to win
The pressure of our thirsty lips.
Pleasant it was to linger there
And cool our fevered finger-tips
In that pellucid stream and share
The solace of the ocean breeze.
For summer heats were now aglow,
The fox sat down and took his ease,
The hare moved purposeless and slow;
But louder rang the blue jay’s scream,
The woodpeck tapped the naked tree,
Nor ceased the simple chickadee
To twitter in the noonday beam.—
My lover, wheresoe’er we strayed,
Made search in every charmed nook,
And angled in the winding brook
For all sweet flowers that love the shade
To twine for me a bridal braid.
Pale yellow lilies, nursed by rocks
Rifted and scarred by lightning shocks,
Or earthquake; river buds and pinks,
And modest snow-drops, pearly white,
And lilies of the vale unite
Their beauty in close-loving links
Around a scented woodbine fair
To coronate my dark brown hair.
The fragile fern and clover sweet
On that enchanted circlet meet;
Young roses lent their blushing hues,
Nor could the cedar leaf refuse
With helmet flowers to intertwine
Its glossy amplitude divine.—
Emerging from that solemn wood,
High on a rocky cliff we stood
At set of sun; far, far away
The splendors of departing day
Upon the barren ocean lay.—
There on that lone sea-beaten height,
Investured in a golden light,
Eugene, with looks half sad, whole sweet,
Upon my brow the garland set,
At once a chaplet and aigrette,
And said: “Be crowned, my Marguerite!
My own true soul, my ever dear
Companion in this wilderness.
Though hopeful still, I sometimes fear
That days of darkness and distress
May come to thee when woods are sere,—
When it may baffle all my skill
To guard thee from white winter’s chill;—
But hence all raven-thoughts of ill,
Let me believe that Nature will
Relax her rigour, having caught
The soft infection of those eyes
In whose blue depths my image lies,
Even as my soul, with love distraught,
Like a lone star drowned in the sea,
Is wholly drowned and lost in thee.—
Love is our own essential being,
Sole sovereign over utmost fate,
Its own sufficient laws decreeing,
Immortal and immaculate;
And when this mild ethereal flame
To mortal man was kindly given
’Twas surely meant by highest Heaven
That never aught of evil name
Should dare attempt to thwart its power.—
Then let us, dearest, from this hour
Defy the future, and pursue
The unimagined pleasure due
To such surpassing love as ours.
One moment in thy folding arms
Alone in these sequestered bowers;
One throb of thy impassioned heart,
Now speaking audibly to mine,
And saying, ‘It were death to part;’
One honey-dew caress of thine,
Out-sums a million rude alarms,
Out-lives whole centuries that weigh
On loveless souls, on sordid clay,
That gravitate to ways of shame,
And know love’s magic but by name.—
These roseate skies will change their hue;
This pomp of leaves when autumn lowers
The windy ways of earth will strew;
This aromatic crown of flowers,
Made sacred now since worn by you,
To-morrow will begin to fade.—
But love, sweet spirit, linked as ours,
By sad vicissitude o’erlaid,
Endures, unchanged by any breath
Of adverse fate, and surely will
Life’s last inevitable chill
Survive, and triumph over death.”—
Thus, eloquent, the radiant youth,
Like one inspired with sacred truth,
Fair as Adonis, o’er me breathed
The incense of pure love, and wreathed
My heart in dewy dreams of bliss.
Consenting Nature, pleased the while,
Bestowed upon her outcast Isle
The magic of a mother’s smile.
Spent Sol impressed his warmest kiss
On ocean’s brow; the wanton wind
Went sighing up and down to find
Meet objects for his soft embrace
All things to amity inclined;
Fierce bird and beast forebore to chase
Their feeble prey, as if they felt
Love’s universal breathings melt
Their savage instincts; everywhere,
Like mute enchantment in the air,
This subtle permeating power
Reigned sole. O, blest ambrosial hour!
O, halcyon days that followed after,
With music from my lute, and laughter,
And song and jest, and such full measure
Of secret love’s exhaustless treasure
As gave to pain the wings of pleasure!—

So fled our summer dream, as flies
An angel through cerulean skies
On some good errand swiftly bent,
So brief its stay that ere we wist,
Gruff Autumn, garmented in mist.
His courier winds before him sent,
The which, equipped with sleet and hail,
Beat down as with an iron flail
The grandeur of the woods, and left
Their naked solitudes bereft
Of bird and flower. The trees stood stark
And desolate against the dark
Chaotic sky. The mighty sea
Its billows hurled upon the shore
As if resolved to over-pour
And gulph our prison-house. Ah, me!
All roofless now, save here and there
A tall pine stretched its spear-shaped head
Aloft into the gelid air;
The hemlock, too, its beauty spread,
A tent-like pyramid of green,
Symbols of hope amid a scene
Where hope grew pale at winter’s tread.

No more, along the sounding shore,
In hushed voluptuous dells, no more,
Nor on the perilous rock which gave
Rude welcome to the climbing wave,
Might we, in amplitude of joy,
Our paradisal hours employ,—
From green to gray, from gray to white,
So rapidly the change came on,
It seemed but the work of a single night
And all our faery world was gone.—
Down came the snow, compact, hard-driven
By all the scourging blasts of heaven,
Until, like clouds, dethroned and hurled
Tumultuous to this nether world,
Around the desert isle it lay,
A rampart to the ocean’s spray.

Half hid where friendly pine trees spread
Perpetual shelter overhead,
Hugging a hillside lifted high
Betwixt us and the arctic sky,
Our cabin stood; a poor defence
Against the mute omnipotence
Of searching and insidious frost,
Which, like a ghoul condemned and lost,
The closeness of an inmate claimed;—
But on the rustic hearthstone flamed
Dry wood and pine-knots resinous:
A ready and abundant hoard
When days were long our hands had stored
Against the season perilous;
And good Nanette, ’twas her desire
To feed the bickering tongues of fire
That warned the dumb intruder hence.

When night fell thick, I loved to sit
And watch the fire-gleams fall and flit
On wooden walls and birch-bark ceiling,
Among the densest shadows stealing,
Till these, in folds and festoons golden,
Like tapestry of castles olden,
Shifted and fluttered free, revealing
To fancy’s charmed and wiser vision
Such fabrics as in looms elysian
The angels weave; and thus our hut
A palace seemed; and was it not
More beautiful, illumed the while
By dear Eugene’s adoring smile,
Than many a royal chamber where,
Concealed amid the gloss and glare,
A thousand hateful evils are?—

Such fare as woodland wilds afford,
Supplied our ever-cheerful board;
Nor such alone; the salt sea wave
Its tributary largess gave,
All that our lenten wants might crave.

Slow crept the whitened months, so slow—
I sometimes felt I never more
Should see the pretty roses blow,
Or tread on aught but endless snow,
And listen to the nightly roar
Of tempest and the ocean flow.
Weird voices, woven with the wind,
Riding on darkness often came
And syllabled the buried name
Of Roberval, which, like a hearse,
Bore inward to my palsied mind
The ghost of his inhuman curse.

Was it sick fancy, sore misled,
That to my shuddering spirit said?—
“Those sounds that shake the midnight air,
Are threats of Shapes that will not spare
Your trespass on their fief accurst.”
“Hush, hush, my love,” Eugene would say,
“That cry which o’er our cabin burst,
Came from the owls, perched royally
Among the pine-tops; you but heard
The language of some beast or bird;
The mooing of a mother bear,
An hungered in her frozen lair;
The laugh and mooing of the loon
That welcometh the rising moon.
The howling of the wolves you hear,
In chase of some unhappy deer,
Impeded in its desperate flight
By deep and thickly crusted snows,
O’er which its lighter-footed foes
Pursue like shadows of the night.
That lengthened groan, that fearful shriek
Was but the grinding stress and creak
Of aged trees; they seem to feel
The wrench of storms, and make appeal
For mercy; in their ducts and cells
The sap, which is their life-blood, swells
When frosts prevail and bursts asunder
With sharp report its prison walls;
Then cease, beloved, to fear and wonder
For all these harmless peals and calls.
In sweet assurance rest, love, rest
Thy head on this devoted breast,
And dream sweet dreams; the gentle spring
Will come anon, and birds will sing
As sweetly as they sang last year;
And shall I not be ever near
To share with thee the murmuring
Of waking life? the humble bee
Will drone again as blissfully
As when from flower to flower he went
And to the choral symphony
His basso horn serenely lent.”—
My fears were laid; I ceased to think;
Athirst and eager still to drink
The nectar of his speech.

How oft,
If he but chanced to hear me sigh
When wild winds blew, or when the soft
And flaky harvest of the sky
Descended silent, he would sit
Under that snow-thatched roof and tell
Such marvellous tales of mirth and wit,
They held me like a wizard’s spell.
Or else some poet’s plaintive verse
That breathed soft vows of youth and maiden,
With love-begotten sorrow laden,
In twilight tones he would rehearse;
And whilst the rhythmic measure flowed
From those attuned lips, my breast
With trepidation heaved and glowed,
For in such guise was well expressed
The master-passion’s undertone,
Or happy or disconsolate,
Of many a lover’s wayward fate
That bore some semblance to our own.

’Twere over-much to pause and tell
How slid the weeks, and all befell
Ere we could to the heavens say,
“The terror of your rage is past,
The gnawing frost, the biting blast,
And life is in the matin ray.”—
The swallow came, the heron’s scream
Athwart the marsh-lands, through the woods,
Sped resonant; I ceased to dream
Of demons, and my waking moods
The radiance of the morning took.
Upon the bare brown leaves I stood,
And saw and heard with raptured look
The gleam and murmur of the brook,
Which we in summer’s plenitude
Had traced to many an arbored nook.

’Twas midmost in the budding May,
Whilst on my couch of cedar boughs,
Perturbed with nameless fears I lay,
And breathed to Heaven my silent vows,—
A cloud-like cope of purple hue
Descended o’er me, hid me quite,
And seemed a soft wind round it blew,
And from the mystic wind a voice
Spoke low: “Poor child of darkened light!
The pure of heart are Heaven’s choice;
The Virgin who hath seen thy tears,
In pity for thy tender years,
Will aid thee in thine utmost plight.”
A hallowed tremor o’er me crept,
And in that purple cloud I slept
Enshrined, how long I never knew;—
And through my dreams the soft wind blew
Like music heard at dusk or dawn,
And when I woke and found it gone,
In fullness of great joy I wept.

’Twas thus a new revealment came,
A something out of nothingness,
To which we gave the simple name
Of Lua. O, the first caress
A mother to her first-born gives!—
Methinks the angels must confess,
Through all the after ages’ lives,
An influence so pure and holy,
That human hearts, the proud and lowly,
Are touched thereby. I kissed, and kissed
My pretty babe, and through the mist
Of happy tears upon it gazed
In silent thankfulness, and praised
The Empress of the skies, whose grace
Had glorified that humble place.

The sandy marge again we trod
Round the green Isle, and felt that God
Was very near,—in ocean’s roar,
And in the zephyr’s scented breath,
In summer green, in winter hoar,
In joy, in grief, in life, in death,
Our Friend and Father evermore.

Again across the naked sea,—
In tumult or in blank repose,
At morn and noon, and evening close,—
Sick yearnings from our souls were sent.
But bootless still the hungry sigh,
A southward sail still southward went,
If any such we might descry,—
As twice or thrice it chanced to be,
We saw or fancied shimmering,
Like a white eagle’s outstretched wing,
Hiding the strait and dubious space
That separates the lifted face
Of ocean from the stooping sky.
The sail would melt, the hollow dome
Above us and our prison home,
And girdling waves, and sobbing rain,
And winds full-fledged,—all things that were
Of earth and sky, of sea and air,
Strangled sweet Hope, and in the pit
Of outer darkness buried it.
Yet seemed it sinful to complain,
When to our feast of love was given
The fairest fruit that gracious Heaven
Had e’er for human joyance shed.
Sweet Innocence! the small hands spread,
Dimpled and white, catching at things
Viewless to us, but clearly seen
By those wide-open eyes; the wings
Of heavenly guests it must have been
Fluttering near the sinless child,
Azure and golden, till she smiled
And shrank from their excessive sheen.

Again the forest’s green arcades
Gladly we paced; their sun-lit shades
Investured us; the laughing brook
That solaced us the year before,
Mirrored again my lingering look;
In that clear glass I could not fail
To see my face grown somewhat pale,
But not less fair; we trod once more
The lofty cliff whereon Eugene
Had crowned me his bride and queen.
Pleasant those summer days to walk
Where no intrusive step could baulk
Our happiness; no tongue to dare
Whisper disparagement, and bare
The mysteries of Love’s free-will,
Approved of Heaven to strive for still,
The liberty that angels share.—
Another summer’s beauty dead,
Another winter’s cerements wound
On tree and shrub; the sheeted ground,
The cruel storm-land overhead,
The scream of frightened birds, the wind
That in its teeth the tree-tops took
And worried all day long and shook,
These and the monstrous ocean blind
With foamy wrath, were ours once more;—
Once more within our cabin mewed
Under the pine-tops, crisp and hoar,
My fears their old alarms pursued.

Four times the moon had waxed and waned
Since summer blooms, so bright and brief,
Were mourned for by the falling leaf,
And winter winds were all unchained,
When came the direful, fatal day.
The Spectre of the wide world came
In league with winter’s fierce array,
In league with fiends that hissed the name
Of Death around the ruined Isle.

Deep lay the snow, pile heaped on pile,
When food fell scant, and on a morn,
Ere yet the infant light was born,
Eager-thus always to provide,
Eugene forsook my drowsy side,
And lavished on my happy lips
His silent love; then gently slips,
Upon the little callow heap
That lay embalmed in downy sleep
His softest kisses: happy child!
She made a little stir and smiled,
As if in soothest dreams she knew
Whence came that quiet fond adieu.
Then pausing at the windy door,
His arquebuse on shoulder laid,
And in his belt a shining blade,
His brow a troubled shadow wore;—
Or was it but my own blurred thought
A semblance of foreboding wrought?
Backward he moved, a tardy pace,
And toward me turned his comely face
And said: “Dear love, I thought to go
Ere thou shouldst wake, for well I know
These frequent partings, though but brief,
Aye touch thy tender heart with grief.”
“Loud blows the nor-wind,” I replied.
“Surely thou needst not haste away
Before the leaden eyes of Day
On our small world are opened wide;
For all these partings, my Eugene,
Are bitter drops that fall between
Our honied draughts of happiness;
Ah! well I know what dangerous toil,
What weary hours companionless,
Are thine in quest of needful spoil,
Be-wrenched, from stubborn wood and wave,
Wherein—Oh God!—an early grave
May compass thee; and I remain
A wretched mourner, doomed to bear
The burning curse and bitter bane
Bequeathed me by Sir Roberval;—
O stay, Eugene, stay yet awhile!
Just now I dreamt I saw thee borne
By Shapes unshapely, stark and shorn,
Three times around the darkened Isle;
Then did the heavens o’er thee bend,
And in a cloud thou didst ascend,
Lost to the world and me forever.”
“Twas but a dream,” he said, “no more,”
But saying which, a painful quiver
His lips betrayed, then cheerily bore
His manly head, and thus made end.

“No evil can such dreams portend:—
Nor need I, dearest, say farewell;
For love and faith cannot deceive,
And hence I cannot but believe,
What holy whispers round me tell,
That though thou tarriest here behind,
Thy spirit journeyeth with me,
Clasping me round whereso I be,
A shelter from the bruising wind,
A covert from the drenching sea.
Then rest, my own brave Marguerite,
Rest thee in trust; ’tis meet that I
The savage elements defy
For thy loved sake, and for the sweet,
Sweet sake of her who slumbers there,
Pillowed upon her golden hair,
Her beauty, love, so like thine own;—
Sweet babe! dear wife!” Ere I could speak
He kissed the tear-drop from my cheek,
And ere I wist I was alone,
The door stood wide, and he had passed
Into the dusky void, and vast
Uncertainties concealed by Fate.
Ah, me! I could but watch and wait

For his return. For his return?
I felt my heart within me burn,
Then sicken to an icy dread,
For seemed a sad voice near me said,
“Thou ne’er shall see his face again!”
The paragon of noblest men!
It could not be; I would not own
A prophecy that turned to stone
All joys that I had ever known.

The wind increased, the day wore on,
And ere the hour was half-way gone
That follows noon, a storm of snow
Blinded the heavens, and denser grew,
And fiercer still the fierce wind blew
As night approached, a night of woe,
Such as no fiend might add thereto.

The double darkness walled us in,
The blackness of the storm and night,
And still he came not! O, what sin,
What blasphemy against the light
Of Heaven had my soul committed?
Never before had eventide
Once found him absent from my side.
Eugene came not! deceived, outwitted,
Sore tempest-tossed and lured astray.
By demons, when the night-owl flitted
Across his face at close of day,
Groping for home, exhausted, faint,
No angel near, no pitying saint
To aid his steps and point the way.

From ebb of day till noon of night,
And onward till return of light,
The signal horn, Nanette and I,
Alternate blew, but for reply
The wind’s unprecedented roar,
And ocean thundering round the shore
Our labor mocked; and other sounds,
Nor of the land, nor sea, nor sky,
Our ears profaned; the unleashed hounds
Of spleenful hell were all abroad,
And round our snow-bound cabin trod,
And stormed on clashing wings aloof,
And stamped upon the yielding roof,
And all our lamentation jeered.

Down the wide chimney-gorge they peered
With great green eye-balls fringed with flame;—
The holy cross I kissed and reared,
And in sweet Mary’s blessed name,
Who erst had buoyed my sinking heart,
Conjured the foul-faced fiends depart.
Their shriekings made a storm more loud
Than that before whose fury bowed
The hundred-ringéd oaken trees;
More fearful, more appalling these
Than thunder from the thunder-cloud;
But trembling at the sacred sign,
And mention of the Name divine,
They dared not, could not disobey,
But fled in baffled rage away.—

The morrow came, and still the morrow,
But neither time, nor pain, nor sorrow,
Nor any evil thing could make
My stricken soul advisement take
Of aught that in the world of sense
The fiat of Omnipotence
Might choose prescribe; I only know
That fever came, whose fiery flow
Surged through the temple-gates of thought,
Till merciful delirium wrought
Release from knowledge, from a world
Where Death’s black banner stood unfurled.—

Restored—condemned—to conscious life,
The parting hour, the storm, the strife,
Rose from their tombs and dimly passed,
But on my spirit only cast
A feeble shade. When known the worst,
When every joy that love has nursed
Lies cold and dead, a sullen calm
Sheds on the bleeding heart a balm
That is not peace, and does not heal,
But makes it half content to feel
The frost upon the withered leaf,
To see love’s lifeboat rock and reel
And founder on the stormy reef.

A languid stupor, chill and gray,
Upon my listless being lay—
I knew and felt Eugene was not;—
I saw that in the osier cot,
Constructed by his cunning skill,
My babe lay sleeping, very still:
So very still and pale was she,
That when I questioned, quietly,
How long since she had fallen asleep,
Nanette could only moan and weep,
And rock her body to and fro.—
With cautious step, and stooping low,
I took the little dimpled hand
In mine, and felt the waxen brow.
O, Queen of Heaven! clearly now,
’Twas given me to understand
That all the warmth of life had fled;
My babe, my pretty babe, was dead!—
In stupefaction fixed I stood
Smitten afresh; a wailing cry,
The wounded love of motherhood,
Rose from my heart; mine eyes were dry
Denied the blessed drops that give
A little ease, that we may live—
Live on, to feel with every breath
That life is but the mask of death.

Regardful of my frozen gaze,
Hard set upon the frozen face,
Nanette, at length, in halting phrase,
Her painful pass essayed to trace:
Told how, when hot the fever ran
Along my veins, and when the wan
And wasted moonshine fringed the hearth,
And voices that were not of earth
Came through the gloom, the famished child,
With pouting lips and eyelids mild,
Her wonted nourishment did crave;
And how, O God forgive! she gave
The little mouth its wish. She told
How dismal were the nights and cold,
Her haunted hours of rest how few,
And how my precious darling drew
From the distempered fevered fount
The malady that raged in me.
How long it was, the tangled count,
One week or two, or maybe three—
Her head astray, she could not tell,
When rang, she said, a silvery bell,
A-tolling softly far away.
So softly tolling, faint and far,
When quiet as the morning star,
That cannot brook the glare of day,
And seeks the upper azure deep,
My Lua (pardon if I weep),
Pure nestling of this sinful breast,
Had struggled into gracious rest.

Unhappy nurse! that hallowed knell
Which on her pious fancy fell
Through midnight dreams was solace meet
For one whose slow, uncertain feet
Their journey’s end had well-nigh gained;
Whose meagre face drooped, pinched and pained,
From ague-fits that lately shook
All gladness from its kindly look.
No longer in those furrows played
The gleams of mirth that erst had made
Her gossip by the cabin fire,
A pleasing hum; for she had store
Of gruesome tales and faery lore,
Which suited with the elfin quire
Of winds that on the waste of night.
Their voices spent; ’twas her delight,
In calmer hours, her voice to strain
With lays of roving Troubadour
That from her girlhood’s bloom had lain
Mid memory’s tuneful cords secure.
How changed she was! soon, soon I felt
My pity for her dolour melt.
My friend and sole companion now,—
I brushed the gray hairs from her brow
And kissed it; then came back to me
The days when on that palsied knee
I perched, a happy child; where late
My babe, my second self had sate:—
Strange orbiting of time and fate.
Hid in the upheaved scarp of rock
That screened our hut from winter’s shock
A cave there was of spacious bound,
Wherein no wave of human sound
Had ever rolled; imprisoned there,
Like a grey penitent at prayer,
Hoar Silence wept, and from the tears
Embroidered hangings, fold on fold,
And silver tassels tinct with gold
The fingering of the voiceless years
Had deftly wrought, and on the walls
In sumptuous breadth of foamy falls
The product of their genius hung.
From floor to ceiling, arched and high—
A counterfeited cloudy sky,—
Smooth alabaster pillars sprung.
On either side might one espy
What seemed hushed oratories rare
Inviting sinful knees to prayer.

Into that chapel-like retreat,
Untrod before by human feet,
The wicker cot, wherein still lay
My Lua’s uncorrupted clay
We bore, and in an alcove’s shade
Our tear-dewed burthen softly laid.
Long muffled in my heavy woe,
I knelt beside the little bed
And many a tearful Ave said.
At length, at length, I rose to go,
But kneeling still, my poor Nanette,
Her crucifix and beads of jet
Clasped in her praying hands, stirred not,
Nor spoke;—our flickering lamp
Through the sepulchral gloom and damp
Made sickly twilight round the cot.
Orbed in her upturned hollow eyes
Two tear-drops gleamed. I said, “Arise!
Come, come away. Good sister, come!”
Still motionless as death and dumb,—
I shook her gently, spoke again,
When sudden horror and affright
Laid hold upon my reeling brain;
Her soul, unshrived, had winged its flight!—
I sank upon the clammy stone,
The lamp died out and all was night.
“Mother of God! alone! alone!”
I cried in agonized despair,
“O pity me! O Mary spare!
A mother’s anguish hast thou known,
O pity me! alone! alone!”
A thousand startled echoes sprang
Forth from their stony crypts, and rang
A ghostly miserere round
The cavern’s dread Cimmerian bound,
Till sinking to a dying moan
They answered back, “alone! alone!”

“Nay, not alone, poor Marguerite!”
I heard a voice divinely sweet,
And in a moment’s awful space
That silent subterranean place
Was filled with light;—I did not dream:
In beauty and in love supreme,
Before me shone our Lady’s face.
(O would I could behold it now)
The coronal upon her brow,
With star-like jewels thickly set,
The Sovereign presence certified.
Pure as the snow that lingered yet
On solemn heights, with sunrise dyed,
Her raiment gleamed. “Weep not,” she said,
And toward me stretched her sacred hands
As if to raise my drooping head;
“Be comforted! the triple bands
Of grief and pain
Which Death around thy heart has coiled
Shall part in twain;
If secret sin thy soul hath soiled,
If thou thy lover loved too well,
The Seraphs say in high debate,
‘Better excessive love than hate,
Save hate of hell.’
If fiends infest this desert Isle
Regard them not; the soul whose trust
On Heaven leans, may calmly smile
At Satan’s utmost stretch of guile
And tread down evil things like dust.
The working of the wicked curse
Branded upon thyself and nurse
Shall cease with dawn of hallowed days;
She fitting sepulture hath found
Under and yet not under ground;
Here leave her kneeling by the child,
Here, where the power thy God displays
Shall keep their bodies undefiled,
Shall change to marble, flesh and bone.
Then come, and leave the dead alone;
Come hence!—thy round of days complete,
Thy babe and lover shalt thou meet
In Paradise.
Look up, arise!
My hands will guide thy fainting feet.”
She led me to the outer light,
And ere a second breath I drew,
Ere I could fix my dazzled view,
She vanished from my misted sight.

Resigned, uplifted, forth I went,
But, oh! ’tis hard to nurse content
In silent walls; to ever meet
With filling eyes the vacant seat;
To tread from day to day alone
The silent ways, familiar grown,
Where dear companionship has shed
A glory and a rapture fled;
Where every hillock, tree and stone
Are memories of a loved one, dead!

Again the flowering springtime came,
The wedding-time of happy birds,
But not, oh! not for me the same;
To whom could I address fond words?
The violet and maple leaf,
Had they but known my wintry grief,
They would not have appeared so soon.
I could not bear to look upon
The beauty of the kindling dawn,
Nor sunset, nor the rising moon,
Nor listen to the wooing notes
That warbled from a thousand throats,
From cool of morn till heat of noon.
My soul was with the wind that sighed
Among the tree-tops; all the wide
Waste desolation of the sea
Possessed me; I could not agree
With aught of earth or firmament.
Where could I go? which way I went
His melancholy shade did glide
Behind the rocks, among the trees,
And whispered in the twilight breeze
Endearments whispered long ago.
In constancy of love and fear
My sick heart bore his heavy bier,
How lovingly the angels know.

I knew not of my lost love’s tomb,
Whether amid the shrouding gloom
Of some tenebrous yawning chasm,
Or in the watery world’s abysm,
He met those spectres of my dream;
No trace, no sign, no faintest gleam
Did all my questing ever show.
’Twas well, perchance, that this was so;
But may I not believe that yet,
Long after we again have met,
I shall know all? shall hear him tell
What on that dreadful night befell,
And how when in the toils of death
He called me with his latest breath
And blessed me? It will magnify
The joys of that dear home on high
If memory keep our bygone woe,
Our grievings of this world below.

A huntress of the woods I grew,
Necessity my frailty taught
To track the fleetest quarry through
The forest, wet with morning dew,
Unheedful of the bruises wrought
On tender feet; the wounds received
From thorns whose leafy garb deceived
My glowing limbs. My loosened hair
I freely gave to every wind,
Content to feel it stream behind,
Or drift across my bosom bare.

So passed the uneventful days,
The sad monotony of weeks,
Till August suns had ceased to blaze;
Till o’er the forest’s hectic cheeks
A languishing and slumbering haze,
The mellow Indian Summer crept;
It was as if chaste Dryads wept
At sign of Winter’s coming tread,
Till from their falling tears was spread
Those exhalations o’er the woods
Amid whose greenest solitudes
Their festivals of joy they kept.

So came the Autumn’s ruddy prime,
And all my hopes, which had no morrow,
Like sea-weed cast upon the beach,
Like drift-wood barely out of reach
Of waves that were attuned to sorrow,
Lay lifeless on the strand of time.

So ebbed my life till beamed the hour
When burst in sudden bloom the flower
Of merciful deliverance.
That day I walked as in a trance,
My dismal round, as was my wont,
To many a joy forsaken haunt
Where oft upon my lover’s breast
My head had lain in blissful rest,
Till coming to that sea-beat height
Where erst, enrobed in golden light,
His hands, aglow with love, conferred
Upon my brow the spousal wreath,
Whilst heaven and all things underneath
His words of sweet adorement heard.
There failed my limbs, and long I sate
At one with thoughts grown desperate.
Two winters had I known since first
I stood upon that Isle accurst,
The third a near, and how could I
Its killing frosts and snows defy?
Surely ’twere better now to die.
So ran my thoughts, and fair in sight
The breakers tossed their plumes of white,
The same as on that fearful day
When bravely through their blinding spray
My menaced lover fought his way.
I listened to their luring speech
Till lost in lornest fantasy;
Till toward me they did seem to reach
White jewelled hands to join with mine.
I rose and answered: “I am thine,
Thou desolate and widowed Sea,
That late hath come to pity me.
My lost Eugene! ’neath yonder wave
Oh should thy faithful Marguerite
Thy lonely corse in darkness meet
How calm, how blest will be my grave!
Sweet babe, adieu! and thou, Nanette,
With tearful eyes on Heaven set,
Thy watch beside my Lua keep.”
Forward I stepped, prepared to leap;—
One loving thought, one hasty glance
Sent o’er the deep to sunny France,
When hove directly into view
A sail, a ship! could it be true?
Or but a phantom sent to mock
My madness on that lonely rock?
Agape I stood with staring eyes
An instant, then my frantic cries
Went o’er the deep, they heard, they saw,
Those mariners, and from the maw
Of Death my timely rescue made.
My Country’s flag the good ship bore,
And just as day began to fade
We parted from that fatal shore,
And long ere moonrise many a mile
To northward loomed the Demon’s Isle.
Soon, homeward bound, again I trod
My native soil, and thanked my God
For that on me he deigned to smile.

Here ends my tale. And now, I pray,
If I have stumbled on the way,
Have shown but little tuneful skill
In this wild chant of good and ill,
My faults, my frowardness forgive.
Here, a sad vestal, let me live,
And share with you the peaceful bliss
That points a better world than this;
Here shall I seek from Heaven to win
Forgiveness for my days of sin;
Here shall my soul in prayer ascend
For him I loved; my godlike friend,
My Husband! if that honored name
Is due to one who naught of blame,
No falsehood, no unmanly art
Ere harbored in his open heart,
Then truly can nor ban nor bar
Deny it to the lost Lamar.
And if at times his spirit flits,
Even here within this holy place,
With mournful eyes before my face,
And by my couch in silence sits
Till blooms the morn, I dare not pray
The gentle shade to haste away.

[1] NOTE TO P. 24.—The settlement of Roberval at Quebec was a disastrous failure. It is said that the King, in great need of Roberval, sent Cartier to bring him home. It is said, too, that, in after years, the Viceroy essayed to repossess himself of his transatlantic domain, and lost his life in the attempt. Thevet, on the other hand, with ample means of learning the truth, affirms that Roberval was slain at night, near the Church of the Innocents, in the heart of Paris.—Parkman, Pioneers of France.

EUDORA.

I.

Like a white blossom in a shady place,
Upon her couch the pure Eudora lay,
Lovely in death; and on her comely face,—
So soon to make acquaintance with the clay,—
Fell faint the languid light of evening gray,
Flecked with the pea-blooms at the window case.

II.

Deep sobbings echoed in the outer hall,
And all things in the chamber seemed to mourn;—
The pictures, which she loved, along the wall,
The cherubs on the frescoed ceiling, lorn,
Looked downward on the face so wan and worn,
And sad each wavy curtain’s foamy fall.

III.

Born with the last, the long laborious sigh,
Her soul, expanding upward, wondrous fair,
Lingered regretful, loath to seek the sky,
Loath to forsake its sister-semblance there;
And, hovering in the chamber’s dusky air,
Gazed on its blank abode with piteous eye.

IV.

There, too, glad-winged, impatient to depart,—
Betwixt the fragrant window and the maid,—
The Angel-Guardian of her gentle heart,
And now the escort of her trembling shade,
Pointed to where the day-beams never fade,
Pointed their path on the celestial chart.

V.

Then spoke Eudora’s Soul: “My comely shell,
Bleached with a silent grief which we alone,
Which only thou and I have known too well,
In cities and in solitudes have known,—
Poor pallid tenement! no more my own,
I grieve, and yet rejoice to say farewell!

VI.

“Rejoice that all thine agony is past,
That never more on thee, my down-blown tent,
Will beat wild sorrow’s suffocating blast;—
And grieve that thou, with whom some years I’ve spent,
Albeit in latter days with discontent,
Must now into the nether night be cast.

VII.

“Once thou wert happy; cheery nights and days
Chasing each other o’er a flowery plain,
Like fairy lovers; all thy modest ways
Fell on fond hearts as falls the summer rain
On heat-rived earth, on thirsty fields of grain,
And thine the golden harvest of their praise.

VIII.

“Half woman grown, half lost in reverie,
Love’s marvel came, and I, thine inner life,
Was calm and tempest-tossed alternately;
For though my fluttering heart with joy was rife,
Some premonition of impending strife
Flitted betwixt us and futurity.

IX.

“The woods our secret knew; their quivering lips
Uttered it audibly; the conscious flowers
Blushed as we passed them to their throbbing tips,
And all the blissful warblers of green bowers
Told it each morning to the waking hours;—
Old ocean knew it, and the queenly ships.

X.

“O dream of dreams, too exquisite to stay!
In which I sailed as in a rosy-cloud
That floats around the heavens a summer’s day,
And when at eve the drowsy woods are bowed,
Responsive to the wind that calls aloud,
Is rent in fragments and dissolves away.

XI.

“So fled my dream when fled the vital spark
Of loved Lysander; Oh! his peerless eyes
Held all the light that piloted my bark,
All the warm sunshine of entrancing skies.—
‘Cold on the battle-field the hero lies,’
So sang the bards, and all the world grew dark!”

XII.

At this her tender yearnings, all unplumed,
Fluttered and faltered into silent awe,
And gasping pause; two gleamy drops illumed
Her incorporeal features, and the thaw
Of frozen love-throbs, true to mercy’s law,
Gave solace, and her heart-tale she resumed.—

XIII.

“A foreign despot dared invade our coast,
And brave Lysander sped to meet the foe;
His was the voice that led the patriot host,
And his the arm that laid the tyrant low;
Thine own fond lips, Eudora, bade him go,
For love of country was thy girlish boast.

XIV.

“With triumph crowned our gallant warrior fell!
And other suitors sought to win thy hand,
And kindred strove to break the evil spell,
And deemed that travel in a distant land,—
The Orient’s classic vales and mountains grand,—
Might calm thy secret sorrow’s turbid swell.

XV.

“In vain the Alps arose, in vain we gazed
Up the sheer heights where climbed Napoleon’s host,
And saw the towering peaks where crashed and blazed
The war of storms that pleased Childe Harold most,
Where now with Jura sits his gloomy ghost,
Above the world he loathed sublimely raised.

XVI.

“Nor Como’s lovely lake, nor Arno’s stream,
Nor wonders of the Adriatic shore,
Nor those immortal cities which redeem
From time and death a venerated lore,
Whose spell the world confesses evermore,
Could shake the winter torpor of our dream.

XVII.

“O how my supplications eve and morn,
Wrestled for him! how frantic my appeal!—
And when he was not, I, a thing forlorn!
Waylaid and robbed of hope, did cease to kneel,
For Heaven no balsam had my hurt to heal,
And oft I wished that thou hadst ne’er been born.”

XVIII.

The Spirit ceased, her humid eyes still bent
On the prone form to which she fain would cleave;
Then thus the Angel: “Weak is thy lament!
The joys of earth but sparkle to deceive,—
And know you not that he for whom you grieve
Awaits our coming in the firmament?

XIX.

“Dear to the people dwelling in the skies
Is he who for his country copes with death,
And, vanquished or victorious, nobly dies;
The air that gives and takes his latest breath
Is thence inhaled by souls of feeble faith,
And freedom flashes from their lifted eyes.

XX.

“Come! dear Eudora, while the waning light
Burns on the lakes and on the mountain tops;
My arm shall aid thee in thy upward flight:—
Soon shall we pass beyond those shining drops,
Where utmost telescopic vision stops,
The limit of a Herschel’s baffled sight.

XXI.

“See! chaste Andromeda unbinds her hair
For us to tread upon; we need not fear
Proud Leo wakeful in his azure lair,
Nor Taurus’ rampant horns and brow severe,
Nor all the glittering terrors that appear
In Ursa’s stormy mouth and hungry glare.

XXII.

“Come! every star now beckons us to come,
O timid sister! spread thy budded wings.
Dost thou not hear the sanctifying hum
Of airy voices? precious whisperings?
List! on the verge of heaven a seraph sings:—
‘Come home, come hither, weary wanderers, come!’”

XXIII.

No more she spoke, but tremulous, amazed,
With hands upon her panting bosom crost,
Far, far away abstractedly she gazed,
As if in beatific vision lost,—
As one just freed from earth’s sepulchral frost,
And suddenly to ’wildering glories raised.

XXIV.

Only an instant thus, for now her Ward
Became transfigured, robed in awful light;
Too beautiful for mortal man’s regard;
And swift through cloudy rifts, with moonbeams bright,
These two immortals winged their starry flight,
Their home revealed, the golden gates unbarred.

THE VOICE OF THE AGES.

The years roll on, and with them roll
The burden of the human soul,
The ache and pain
Of heart and brain,
That hear far off a solemn night-bell toll.

List! ringing clear, another sound
Reverberates the world around.
The rapt Soul listens;
A tear-drop glistens
Down her pale cheek and trickles to the ground:—

A tear of joy, for she hath heard
The promise of the ancient Word
Over the dark
Prevailing: hark!
“All thy hopes, wan Soul, now sere and blurred,

Shall surely yet rebud and bloom;
Discard thy self-spun robe of gloom,
Awake! arise!
More just and wise,
Thy failing lamp with higher life relume.

The prophecy of ages past
Shall be fulfilled at last;—
Lo! man shall rise
With fadeless glory in his eyes,
His knowledge clarified, illumed and vast.

Thou wert of old, thou art, shalt be,
A thing unbound and ever free
To work, and will,—
A throb, a thrill,—
A joyous breath of immortality.”

THE WOODLAND WALK.

Through the murk of the night, thou rememberest well,
The year and the month and the day of the week,
When we slipped away from that great hotel,
To escape the Babel of tongues that fell,
With wearisome sameness of sound and swell,
On ears that had wiser employ to seek.
The night was as calm as a child’s first prayer,
And we did not venture one word to speak
Till we entered the path of the cool green wood,
And felt in our whispering hearts it was good,
For thee and me to be there.

Thy hand on my arm, we held our way
Till we came to the mountain lake,
The dear little woodland lake,
Where together we sat on its margin gray,
And queried on all they meant to say,
The batrachian people that round it spake;—
And the peace of the skies, with stars o’erstrown,
Passed into our souls, my life! my own!
And I loved the universe more for thy sake.

Gladly we watched the full-orbéd moon
Rising behind the shimmering trees,
Till she kissed their slumbering brows, when soon
In a silvery sea they sank in swoon.
When over them ran a tremulous breeze,—
While they dreamt of joy and murmured their love
To the Lady who laughed at their worship above,—
Making a mimic noon.

Down over the rim of the forest she looked,
So chaste her beauty, all evil things,
With or without or feet or wings,
In the might of her purity felt rebuked.—
She looked in her mirror, the lake, to behold
Her image once more:—
“It was lovely of yore,
And cannot grow charmless, cannot grow old,
No wrinkle the malice of years hath wrought
On that envied brow, which is fair to-night
As when the first pair of true lovers sought
My friendly smiles to aid their flight,
And hallow the vows their twin-hearts taught.”

This to her image the chaste moon said;—
And such, my beloved, is thy face to me,
(Nay, do not shake that skeptical head,)
Ever as fair, ever as young,
As when first thy beauty inspired my tongue
To pray the Fates that our names might be
Together engraved, and the tablet hung
On the love-lit walls of eternity.

Athwart the white tablet if shadows are cast,
As clouds the face of the moon perplex,
It is wiser to think they will not last,
However prolonged, and cold, and vast,
Shadow and cloud will cease to vex.

These we will strive to forget, but not
Our woodland walk on that July night,
When the craze of the world was quite forgot,
And heaven came down to the arbored spot,
Where we bathed in Dian’s crystal light.

The happy musicians around the lake,
Who kept all the infant echoes awake,
The bull-frogs bellow, the tree-toads trill,
The plaintive cry of the whip-poor-will,
And the hawk’s alarm—I hear them still.

One hour of rest in the forest shade,
Where delicate mosses on rocks are laid,
And violets peep from under a stone,
Is a blissful exchange for the city’s parade,
Its prodigal shows and masquerade,
Where mammon is king, and rest there is none.

Better than all the philosophy taught
By sages famed in the realm of thought;—
Truer than sermons, wiser than books,
And honester far than the solemnest looks
Of parson or priest, was the ancient lore
That back from the woods in our hearts we bore,
The woods, and the lake and the lisping brooks,
To a world that is weary, yet rests nevermore.

STREET WAIF.

I.

From morn till noon, from noon till night,
Pacing the sidewalk, always in sight,
Who has not seen the mysterious wight?
Is he man or ghost?
Is he crazed or lost?
Does he walk with the fiends or the spirits of light?

II.

Answer, ye flagstones that echo his tread;—
Answer, ye cold winds that buffet his head;—
Tell us, ye clouds, that with pinions outspread
Smite him with fire,
And mock at his ire,
Shuns he the living for love of the dead?

Through the long lapse of the changing year
His crumbling garments unchanged appear,
The old drab coat, and the thing so queer
Stuck to his pate!
All out of date,
Tempting the urchins to point and jeer.—
“_Poor waif!_”

III.

Poor waif!—’tis the murmur of angels who grieve;
’Tis a voice from the clouds which my soul must receive.
Tell me the secret whose whispers bereave
His eyelids of joy;
Preserve or destroy,
Crush him in mercy, or grant a reprieve.

IV.

Has he been guilty of some dark deed?
Surely no crime in that brow could breed!
So lofty, so mild in its terrible need?
Has he betrayed
An innocent maid?
Or plundered the poor to surfeit his greed?

V.

Has he, for sake of a crumb and a sip,
With loyalty’s cry evermore on his lip,
Counselled the use of a merciless whip
When failure brought blame
On the Patriot’s name,
And tyrants their hot-sided beagles let slip?

VI.