Madeline :: :: University of Virginia Library

Be memory the soul that dieth not
Lest love, the only joy, should be forgot,
Be memory the life beyond the grave
That beareth hence the little it would save,
Then Madeline surely saw all anguish close;
Saw love as one who from the dead arose.

Pure is the Alpine snow;
Not night can hide its glow:
Self-luminous along the rayless waste!
Yet eyes than frosted light
More lustrous and more chaste,
On Madeline pour their sight.
Round her the angel flings
Two loving arms, while droop two silvery wings.

Still Madeline all that love repels,
Though it was missed beyond the firmament,
Whence it was sent
To save for heaven the favourite who rebels.

Madeline, still sick and chill,
Was prone to brood on ill;
But not for this an angel's love she spurned:
A shame, with eyes abashed,
Her cheeks to hectic turned,
And through their pallor flashed.
Then spoke with artless skill
That draws a weaker to a firmer will,
The looks that mourn a soul's distress.
Nor words, though more than syren-like their strain,
Can tell again
The epithets that holy eyes express!

And these could Madeline bear,
Still unreleased the tear?
Yet why renew the sympathetic tie
If hope in her be dead?
Her soul's sad malady
To one so taintless spread?
More easy to impart
The sure infection than allay its smart!

So thought she volubly, so spoke
Within her soul, that tablet which records
The silent words.
At length the noiseless dialogue she broke.

“Not like to mine thy race!
Thy steps imprint no trace.
Mine sink into the mire; an outcast's feet
Their naked stamp betray
The curious eye to greet,
Though lonesome be their way.
Yet was I never poor
Till he who loved me forced my father's door.
Thou knowest the tale of my disgrace:
The ruby ring that this wan finger wore
His image bore.
Now pale its glow and dim its living face.

“O messenger of love
Thy gentle arms remove!
Not all thy purity can re-engraft
The flower that buds no more;
Not all thy heavenly craft
Its virtue can restore.
Ah blest were it to lie
Upon thy neck, these eyelids close, and die!

Few tears these spendthrift eyes can spare.
Alone the ways of confidence are sweet
When equals meet:
But joy and sorrow little have to share.

“Leave me that I may rove
Unwatched by others' love,
And drag my load of life from all away,
To every eye unknown.
Leave me alone to stray,
Till death shall take his own.
No blush can then retrace
The crimson cloud that drifts before my face,
Nor more the pallid cheek assail.
In kindness leave me to resign my breath
Alone to death;
In solitude of soul his coming hail!

“From home I turn my face
Where tears my name displace.
Here is the vagrant welcome to a tomb,
With her memorial shame
Inscribed within her womb:
Beyond the reach of blame.
O leave me on this spot;
Or where I yet may wander, follow not!

For thou art decked in newest light;
A pity in thine eye that ever dwells
Thy nature tells:
Not death's cold angel on her downward flight!

“Leave me, yet with thee take,
For both my parents' sake,
This broken heart, to them its love return.
Be thou its sanctuary,
Be thou its vital urn;
But leave me here to die.
No child to them is left:
Of honour robbed of all are they bereft.
And if their prayer by thee be blest,
And they their child have asked thee to restore,
Return no more
Till thou canst say her spirit is at rest.

“O guardian of my home,
Say not that thou hast come
To lead me hence: my father's voice I hear
And dread its stifled tone!
My mother's love I fear
When left with her alone!
On death my prayer remains,
That they may weep once more then end their pains.

And couldst thou to the loved again
His peace of mind restore, when I am dust,
In heaven his trust;
Then should immortal hope my end sustain.”

As dreams o'er conscience sweep
Ere closed the gates of sleep;
As winds the flooded meadow brush along
Where water-blossoms bloom,
She poured her raptured song,
And wailed her maiden doom.
Within the angel's car
Sank deep the words, to her than heaven more dear.
Madeline had told her tale again,
But now the choking, intermittent sob
With piteous throb,
Drowns in its swell the current of her pain.

As thus her heart repines
On Daphne she reclines.
Now with a gasp she yields her panting breath,
Now in rehearsal slow
Repeats the sigh of death:
Life's ending ebb and flow.
O'er her the angel bends
To learn how ever-sobbing languor ends:

She fears the life may suffer wreck,
And glide, unconscious, past its level brink,
To sink and sink,
Until the universe seem but a speck.

Madeline has ceased to stray
Along the conscious way,
She sinking lightly on oblivion's car,
With loosened reins her palm
Entangled, as afar
She skims the ethereal calm.
Her yet tremendous fate
No obstacles betray, no dreams relate:
But hushed in that mysterious sleep,
Her passions in unbroken billows rest,
Nor foams their crest:
Forbade to stir on the enchanted deep.

Now safe across the bar,
No shoals her course to mar,
The soul has rest, that daily else must die.
And as its living flame
Within the tomb may lie
To answer to its name,
Her body she enshrouds
Beside the tempest in the passing clouds,—

Those cerements of a troubled night!
So takes she part with universal rest,
And like the blest
Her inner temple guards with lamp and light.

Becalmed the moments creep;
Her tears drop off, asleep.
Her couching eyelids fringe the placid cheek.
A holy fervour feeds
Her bosom orbed and meek:
The peace her spirit needs.
The giver of all alms
With thrill of strange delight her heart cmbalms.
Like music on the wane, she drops
Into a wondrous pause, and, full of life
Without its strife,
Absorbs the bliss of heaven while being stops.