The Vision of Prophecy and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

O Sleep! what sorcery is like to thine,
So subtle, so resistless? In what grove
Or garden dost thou gather the rare herbs
Whose juices have such virtue, that the soul,
Once tasting them, is on the instant loosed
From its companionship with flesh, to dart
From zone to zone more swiftly than the spark
Electric, shooting through its nerves of steel?

Silent the city lay, with all its streets
Drowsed in the glow of noon. The sultry air
Was overcharged with languor; the weak wind
Was stifled in the open, shadowless ways.
Faintly she hears the soft and liquid flow,
Of the small runnels freshening the roots
Of thick-leaved platans in the garden-walks,
And the cool plashing fountain in the court,

And as she listens, she is calmly lulled
Into a deep repose. An interval,—
How long she knows not,—but, as in old times,
And with no sense of change, she seems to be
Within her Roman mansion, on the slope
Of the low Esquiline, whence roams the eye
O'er the green champaign, with its countless loops
Of granite arches, and the fitful gleam
Of Tiber winding slow, to the white walls
Of cool Praeneste, and the Alban hills,
And the blue ridge of piny Algidus.
Again through well-known chambers, draped and dim,
She passes,—vestibules, where statues watch
In breathless immortality,—wide halls,
Where cedarn roofs are rough with stalactites
Of fretted gold, and tessellated floors
Mirror the floating movement of her robe;—
Yet on this splendour now she seems to look
But listlessly. She carries on her heart
A crushing weight of sadness. Agony
Is working in the quiver of her lip.
An unimagined misery, a dread
Presentiment of evil, wraps her soul
In gloom, and chills the inmost springs of life.

So vacantly she thought she wandered on,
With all her anguish in a tearless eye,

Till to a little chamber she has come;
One step within it, and she stands as struck
To marble. There, upon a couch, she thought,
Lay a sweet child, as if through weariness
O'ercome by balmy slumber. But 'twas sleep
Without a smile or sigh,—and as she lay,
A heavy silence throbbed within the air,
And made a swoonlike tingling in the brain,
More deep, more terrible, than that of sleep.
Fair seemed the little maiden resting there,—
Her dark eyelashes drooping down a cheek
Still lovely though unblooming, and her pale
Seraphic beauty showed the small blue veins
Upon her delicate brow. One raven tress
Had fallen loose, escaping from the fillet,
Whose pearls were duskier than the brow they bound.

Beside the couch the lady thought there lay
A withering rose-wreath, as if newly dropped
From a relaxing grasp, and in her dream
She lifted it, and with an aching heart,
Gazed on the flowers those fingers small had woven.
One rose was but a bud,—it had been plucked
Too soon,—and now the red lips of its leaves
Were shrunk and seared. “And faded art thou too,”
She thought, “my rosebud, in thine opening hour,—
Struck is the gracious promise of thy spring

By sudden blight,—thy rifled sweetness here
Lies low, nor can the sunshine nor the rain
Revive it evermore!”

In passionate grief
She seemed to sink upon her knees, and search
Those pallid features, half-beguiled to hope
Some flitting look might answer to her own.

A sudden terror shook her in this trance
Of agony,—a vague presentiment,
Which made her shrink and tremble as it came,
That she was not alone. Then timidly,
She thought, she raised her eyelids, and, behold,
Before her, standing by the farther side
Of the small couch, was One whose eye was fixed
Upon her steadfastly. It was a mild
And gentle look, that thrilled her heart, and seemed
Withal to soothe its pain, and in His eye,
A serene radiance shone, a tempered gleam,—
The mingling lights of purity and love.
Sorrow in his calm aspect seemed to veil
And chasten majesty; the settled grief
Of some intense endurance, meekly borne
In far-uplifted solitudes of thought,—
Some shadow, life-long inmate of the soul.
As thus he looked on her, seeming to read
The secret anguish that consumed her heart,

The thought, she knew not how, grew slowly up,
Still waxing stronger, till her pulses throbbed
With wavering emotion, that, beneath
These simple robes, One stood, whose heart must hold
Immortal sympathy,—some Son of Heaven,
Whose pity was the spring that moved His power.
Wherefore, it seemed to her, with all her heart
Tremblingly balanced on one doubtful hope,
Dreading a chance, so precious yet so frail,
To hazard on the cast of speech, she, still
Low kneeling, thus addressed Him:“On this couch
She lies who was my child,—now she has died,
And left me desolate;—O! canst Thou help me?”
“The damsel is not dead,” He calmly said,
“But sleepeth.”—O'er her features passed a smile
More like despair than sorrow.—“Then believe!”
He cried, “and doubt no more.” Gently he took
The maiden's hand in His, and in a low,
Clear voice, He said, “Arise!” Even as he spake
There was a change, as if the pulse began
To beat in her thin wrist,—the flush of life
Passed swiftly o'er her cheek, a mantling bloom,
Like the warm rosy light which sunset casts
On mountain-snow,—a slumberous movement broke
The iron spell of Death,—her reddening lips
Breathed a faint sigh,—and opening her eyes,

With the enquiring wonder of a long
And ended dream, she named her mother's name,
And smiled to see her there. But marble pale,
As in a swoon of joy, the mother now
Had sunk upon the ground, and clasped the feet
Of the Deliverer. “Tell me but Thy name,”
She cried, “that I may load it evermore
With honours, and heap up with sacrifice
The altars of Thy Godhead?” “Thou hast heard
Of me,” He said; “I am the Galilean;
I seek no sacrifice but one. Lay thou
Thy heart upon Mine altar, and adore
Thy false ancestral gods, who cannot save,
No more!” A silence closed upon His words,
And he was gone as if a sudden cloud
Had quenched a cheerful sun-gleam of the air.

O Sleep! what sorcery is like to thine,—
So bland, yet so prevailing? By what art
Canst thou the shadow on Life's dial move
Even as thou listest? Oft I think of thee
As seated in some lone and glimmering cave,
With pentagram and sigil on its walls,
Where to the drowsy, never-ceasing hum
Of thy revolving spindle, thou shalt draw
A moment's slender thread out endlessly

Into a dread eternity of thought.
There at the waving of thy magic wand
Time shuts and opens, narrows and expands,
As with the brazen joints and cylinders
Of the Etruscan tube. Like shreds of foam
On the smooth current of a rapid stream,
The years return or pass without a sound;
We live down hoary cycles, and awake
To find we have not slept one little hour.
That Image vanished, but the dream went on:
From the disordered elements of thought,
As after a long interval and blank
Of memory, the vision shaped itself
Again The mingling shadows and the forms
That wavered in the ripples of the mind,
Settled by slow degrees as it grew calm,
And were incarnate with the breath of life.
It seemed that after months had glided past,
A day marked golden in the calendar
Came round, when all Rome's noblest matrons went
To the temple of Diana, with the pomp
Of sacrifice, to laud the goddess born
With bright Apollo in the laurelled isle,
And in white-terraced Ephesus adored.

And she was there; her presence graced the rite,
When with a stately pace, through the broad streets,
Went the religious multitude; and ne'er,
She thought, had Dian's festival been kept
With equal honours, nor a prouder band
Of worshippers. Conspicuous in the van,
It seemed to her, she walked, chosen to lead
The rite by acclamation of her peers.
In that patrician throng the foremost place
Had fallen to her, but with a burdened heart
She the dread symbols to the altar bore.
No pride was sparkling in her eye, no joy
Of gratified ambition flushed her brow;
Her cheek was pale and sorrow-worn, her eye
Was overcast with thought, and even the smile
Of the fair child beside her, whose sweet face
Was lighted up with gladness, failed to win
One look, responsive to her guileless joy.

Sadly she watched the victim's trickling blood
Crimson the flamen's knife; sadly she joined
In the melodious chanting of the hymn.
The rite now ended, her companions left
The temple; but some impulse, so she thought,
Urged her to linger. Through long corridors,
Which echoed to her footfall, wearing still

Her robes of ministration, she passed on,—
Her daughter by her side. Through secret rooms
She wandered, in a vacancy of thought,—
Through crypt and pillared portico, and all
The ample shadowy range of twilight-courts,
Until she seemed again to stand before
The altar. Priest and votary were gone,—
Silent the sanctuary lay, which late
Rung with the sound of tuneful instruments,
And voices silver-clear. She sate her down
Hard by the altar; but her bosom still
Heaved with the tumult of her thoughts,—a mist
Fell on her eyes,—each moment was a step
Down some dark endless winding-stair of woe,
Till the long-pent emotion struggling found
An utterance; and, trembling at her words,
She cried, “Oh, Galilean! if indeed
Thou art, and Thou alone, to be adored,
Appear, and dissipate these lingering doubts!”
She spake, and, e'er the hollow echo died
In the still temple, she was conscious He
Before her stood once more. Alas! how changed,
How wasted now! and with what deep-worn trace
Of suffering in his frame. Sorrow, indeed,
Had all but quenched her fear through the sole sense
Of sympathy. Those Godlike brows were bound

With a green corded wreath, its cruel thorns
Sheathed in the living flesh,—the stiffened hair
Clung round His temples,—down His sunken cheek
Large blood-drops trickled slowly,—and a robe
Of faded purple loosely wrapped His form;
His visage wrinkled with untimely care,
The anguish of a self-included soul,
There writing its stern secret. Yet, withal,
His features wore that sweet embodied charm
Of grace immortal that had made them look
More beautiful than man's. His eye still gleamed
With love that triumphed over all its wrongs,
And pity, that o'ermastered by its strength
The utmost rage of evil,—shone with clear
And spiritual light, wherein no fire
Of earthly passion mingled. With a look
Of sadness, piercing deeper than reproach,
The lady thought He fixed on her His eye,
Thus speaking: “Thou hast called, and I have come!
Thou lookest on these wounds,—regard them well:
Thy husband's hand hath made them. Even now
He hastens to the judgment-seat, to judge
And to condemn me,—Me, his God and thine!”

And, on the instant, fast as evening clouds
Stream upward from a mountain top, the mists
Were lifted from her brain. The eventful dream

Was ended, and all trembling, but convinced,
The dreamer woke.