University of Virginia Library

So false, so frail, and yet so passing fair!
So very beautiful and yet so lost
To every hope that Beauty must inspire!
So blessed in form to be more deeply loathed!
So high in Heaven's best gifts, and yet so low
In their misuse! Shut from the hallowed shrine
Of a pure name, thou standest by the gate
Most like a pillar exquisitely wrought
For an immortal monument of Love,
Tho' there is falsehood in thy smile, and blight
Upon thy lips, and ruin in thy heart,
And every evil passion unsubdued
Rioting in thy dark spirit, and Despair
The tyrant of thy unrepenting soul!
Alas! that hell should wear the form of Heaven!
O that the heart had in itself a power,
Subtle and piercing like the air, to mark
Pernicious purposes, and baffle all
Midnight conspiracies that wait their hour,
Or shun the peril ere the breathless time
When strength draws forth its armory for war!
Weep! that the ancient days have gone when dreams
Oracular, or hoary prophets warned,
Or Urim showed, as in a burning sea,
The winding paths of evil, and the foes
That skulked in hidden refuges for spoil!
Weep! that we wander in uncertain ways,
By certain dangers compassed, unaware
When, how, or where the dark assault may come!
Virtue! in man or woman (most in her,
The angel of his home) supremely fair
In image and in action! why art thou
Austere in thy aspect and chilling oft,
Scorning bland courtesies and manners mild,
When high-bred Vice throws o'er her nameless deeds
The mellow shadows of dissembling smiles
And shrewd hypocrisies, that charm away
The fear of sin—and dazzle ere they kill?
Why on thy brow should sorrow hold her throne,
And gloom o'ercome thy spirit, when thou art
The empress of so large a heritage,
A boundless, endless kingdom, fair beyond
The poet's twilight imaging? Blest child
Of the Immaculate! why are thy paths
So perilous and rugged, and thy lot
So lonely, and thy heart so burden-bowed
And broken?—Guilt looks on thy fair domain,
With an inheritor's bold, gloating eye,
And sits, as on the utmost starry top
Of Orizaba, thron'd; the passing world
Look up and wonder—shudder and adore!
'Would that the cynic Heathen's thought were done!
So each would know the other—truly know—
And, knowing, shun his deep intents, ere yet
Born in irrevocable deeds of death!
For why should all be mockery? Why trust
To be deceived forever? Soon the heart,
Purpled by plague-spots—shares the guilt it fears,
And Vice inherits what it first usurped.

A wayworn pilgrim o'er a desert world,
I met thee with an ecstacy of heart
Too high and too intense for Earth—and then,
Even then—though outwardly surpassing fair,
O'ercanopied by floating loveliness,
And moving like a spirit in the light
Of its inspired divinity and love—
While I beheld thee with a saintlike eye,
Like the Madonna's worshipper, and breathed
The air that kissed thee as 't were rare perfume,
Oh! then thou wert sin's victim—frailty's child,
Beyond the imagination of all guilt,
Cast out to scorn and ruin and despair—
A tomb o'erblazoned by men's mockery,
An angel form inherited by fiends!
The blossom and the golden fruit were fair,
But, ere the early summer days were past,
The Dead Lake's ashes festered all the core!
Glory was in the rainbow—it dissolved
In darkness, lurid clouds and bitter tears!
Oh! I did love thee with a burning heart,
Triumphant in its deep devotedness
And eloquent aspirings; and thou wert,
For one all-passionate hour, the very dream
Of intellectual Beauty—faery light,
And joy ineffable, that oft had passed
O'er me in earlier days of high romance.
Alas! the doom of knowledge! and alas!
That all the earnest worship and pure love
Of my o'erflowing spirit should be cast
Like shattered wrecks upon a boundless sea,
And all the tender gushings of my heart
Driven back in Alpine torrents—cold as death!
Why didst thou crush the bud ere yet it bloomed?
Or why come o'er my nature with the face
Of a winged seraph, when the Demon's eye
Glared through the soft curls of thy floating hair?
When Beauty smiled in radiant Glory's arms,
My earlier Fancy dreamed of such as thou
Didst seem;—and I have basked in such sweet dreams,
Till the green earth and azure sky appeared
Too lovely—too beloved for this brief hour
Of lingering trial for a happier world.
I once had catholic faith in everything
The spirit pictured in its fairy moods;
But now I'll dream no more, nor longer trust
Extrinsic beauty, foreign ornament,
The garniture of falsehood; for without
The magic of a consecrated mind,
Guarded by cherubim, and inly filled
With images of moral loveliness,
Vain as the bright flamingo's shadow, cast
Upon the running brook, are all the charms
That mask the treachery of an evil heart.