 | Maiden Ecstasy |  |
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THE SELF-CONSCIOUS.
I
Love, like an odour-bearing dew, distilsFrom her heart's flower, and with its innocence
Sweetens her soul and all her senses fills
With the new, heavenly sense.
Soon is her face with the love-witchery lit,
But when another comes its sweets to glean
It strives with bashful veil to cover it
Lest her new thoughts be seen.
II
She is all love and one her love would claim,Which 'neath his look she trembles to confess,
As if her heart had sinned and in its shame
Was stricken passionless.
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She stood abashed, in all her thoughts reproved
To feel but yesterday she was a child
In sight of him she loved.
III
Her thoughts are only tendril-like entwinedOne with another, clinging as in play,
And dare not yet about a lover's wind,
But shrinking, drop away.
Even thus perturbed, such love-allurements crowd
Her helpless face, no man, the least of these
Could dwell on, were he to an angel vowed,
And turn away in peace.
IV
Her childhood pious, all her yearnings pure,None deemed in her the passion lay so deep,
Or that her heart could all that love endure
And still its secret keep.
Shame held her who ere long had freely told
All her heart-sickness, now so hard to bear;
But to avow it then appeared so bold,
She did her love forswear.
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V
Alone, her love half-angrily returns;Its passion fuller, steeped in tears of shame,
Till every thought as its own cresset burns
And dies away as flame.
So, reaching to her soul, the infective fire
Flashes within her heart, runs on uncurbed,
Till but o'er embers creeps the pale desire
That first her soul disturbed.
VI
Her lover, angered; she with fainting breath,Once hastily again each other crossed,
When seemed to both there was a sudden death
Whereby a world was lost:
That angered glance comes ever now behind
The loving look and passes to its place,
And thenceforth is the master of her mind,
The despot of her gaze.
VII
False vision! yet the false the true o'ertakes,And, while the chase of madness lasts, her fate
Still borders on its course; her love she stakes,
As seemeth, 'gainst his hate.
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Too weak to utter its life-mocking moan:
Ah! of itself what buried soul can raise
Its monument of stone!
VIII
Blank now the sacred page save that his eyesAre graven where she turns the lost one's book,
And there they say her hope within them lies
As with a prophet's look.
Heaven hears her love, hears it before her prayer,
Her blushes still upon the altar strewn;
But ah! the angered face again is there,
With it is she alone.
IX
But she knows heaven, and there a soul unveilsThat wants to see the face without desire
Which softens sorrow and o'er love prevails;
But heaven appears to tire.
So at her heart must all her love remain
Stifled in grief; and to her maddened breast,
Familiar as her home, comes back again
The heaven that has no rest.
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X
Where are the tears, the tears so long unshed?Would they but flow and soothe the strangling pain
Round the fair throat, that, often clenched in dread,
Would still its scream restrain!
Closed up the heaven-way to her muttered prayer,
The shriek ascends; so is her reason choked,
And the sad ravings of her soul's despair
Are poured out uninvoked.
XI
‘This hand, did I refuse so poor a thing,When, were he now the flood that rushes by,
I would be gone and to his bosom cling,
Were it to sink and die!
These eyes that he has loved, though still they bear
His image, would I give him; even this breath—
Were it my last, and this wan, wasted hair
Down pouring unto death!’
XII
Amazed, her loved one learns that all her speechIs but the burning vow she fain had given,
Which, as she drifts away from human reach,
She mutters close to heaven.
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There, but the sob of waters holds her sense;
There, but the flashing torrent in her eyes
Sparkleth and floweth hence.
XIII
While burn her cheeks beneath his piercing smile,He seems within her mind, tho' at her side;
The angry spectre in a little while
Must to her chamber glide.
Why waits she, by one leap might she elude
The form that shall ascend when this is gone,
The look of love too long by her has stood,
Why doth it come alone?
XIV
He leaves her, on her eyes the casement glows:A balm-hung balcony of rustling leaves
Its broken, ever-flitting shadow throws,
Which the sun's tremor cleaves;
The soothing sound of waters seems to say
That he is in their midst, that where they roll
Is bliss, and new-awaking unto day
And quiet to her soul.
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XV
An impulse grows within her, she must leapInto the flood; the heavings of his breast
Allure her thither in their cold to steep
Her heart that burns for rest.
Outside he stays to grieve, his only good
To think she is within; but, now, alarms
Are heard, she wildly rushes to the flood
But rests upon his arms.
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