Madeline :: :: University of Virginia Library

From mountain chain, snow-capped, to mountain chain,
The encampment floats above the sacred plain.
But now the standard droops in listless folds,
Though every tent a watchful spirit holds:
Hid in its azure plaits the signal star
More sad in truce than spirit-stirring war.

Now by the mountain side,
Where thoughts like waters glide,
Sits Daphne in a lustrous tissue draped,
Knotted at either arm.
In waving beauty shaped,
It consecrates the charm
While down her breast it gleams,
And circles to her lap in fulgent streams.

There on the eddying garment rests
A woman's elbow, in its flood immersed,
Ere thence dispersed
Its floating fold the parted knees invests.

Her nude right arm ascends
And o'er the wretched bends
Whose cheek the open palm its shadow yields:
An attitude divine!
Her love the helpless shields
Who leans on her supine,
With rounded shoulder shelved
Upon the plaint breast where it had delved.
Recumbent in the sultry shade,
Madeline at length enjoys, in languid grace,
A resting-place;
Her truce awhile with feeble Nature made.

The kiss still haunts her lip
Its ecstasy to sip,
And on voluptuous beauty hold a feast.
Yet love might turn to hate
Within a calmer breast,
The past to expiate.
What in that face so dear
Whispers to Daphne, now, the thrilling fear?

Can love the longing lips divide,
The listless features govern with its spell,
And yet foretel
The subtlety of hate, the lull of pride?

But though of placid mood,
The Furies round her brood;
And, when she sleeps, they sleep beside their prey;
And when she dreams, her dream
They urge her to obey,
With rusted looks that gleam:
Like hounds before the chase,
Their instincts whetted for the hungry race.
To Daphne's eyes not hard to prove,
For love ranks foremost of prophetic powers,
What tempest lowers,
Held in the net necessity had wove.

How gentle is she now!
No line disturbs her brow;
Her bosom pendant, like a setting orb,
Its throb from anger weans,
Thoughts holier to absorb.
On peace her spirit leans
Encircled by its wings,
Like the paternal planet by its rings.

Weak through affliction, in the bliss
Of sympathy she revels like a dove
Beside its love:
And oft her placid cheek receives a kiss.

But in the distance brood
Thoughts not to be withstood,
That to the virgin wound untimely haste.
Is love or hate most dear
Where sweet affections waste?
The mellow fruits they bear
From one same bough may drip
Their luscious poison on the thirsting lip.
Hid from her vision, as she lies,
Ascend high towers, her lover's ancient hold,
With turrets bold,
That furnish grandeur to the modest skies.

The robe that round her flows
Is stirred like drifted snows;
Its restless waves her marble figure drape,
And all its charms express,
In ever-changing shape,
To zephyrs that caress
Her limbs, and lay them bare,
And all their grace and loveliness declare.

Nor modesty itself could chide
The soft enchanters as they past her breathe,
And beauty wreathe
In rippling forms that ever onward glide.

Breezes from yonder tower,
Loosed by the avenging power,
Her senses hurry, and a dread impart.
In tremor she beholds
Her fluttering raiment start
In ribbed and bristled folds.
Its texture close and fine
With broidery sweeps the bosom's heaving line,
Then trickles down as from a wound,
Curdling across the heart as past it steals,
Where it congeals
In horrid clots her quivering waist around.

Now from her cincture weep,
As limpid waters creep,
The gentle folds that her sweet body bathe,
Ere coursing to her feet
The nether limbs to swathe.
What charms the eye to greet!
The modest bosom's slant,
The bended knees, the shoulder petulant.

Can art midst all her marbles show
Ideal orbs that rise like hill on hill
With heaving thrill;
And vales that with a living vesture glow?

Sounds, as the cadence sweet
When verse and music meet,
Distract her ear; but in her clouded eyes,
Where lash and shadow play,
A sadness deeper lies
Than dims their blue array;
A weary look that tells
Of sorrow past, and on new sorrow dwells!
She lists as Daphne's words express
All that her love can utter save a tear,
And that is near;
The accessory yet the soul's excess.

“Oft didst thou hear me tell,—
O mark my warning well!—
Ere thou canst cross the purple dome again
To touch the happy shore,
Exempt from future pain
And sinned against no more,
To live where angels live,—
The one ordeal yet is to forgive!

But at thine eyes the thought divine
In one sad glance recedes from paradise,
When it might rise
To catch the glories destined to be thine!”

Words not too mild to chide
The weak one at her side,
Prompted by hope that warbles as it sinks
Into its own despair!
How human nature shrinks
From scenes than life more fair!
Madeline saw not the prize,
Held not the hope its worth to realise.
Her soul as earthly dew was cold.
Glory broke on her, but with jaggèd ray,
And turned away,
When her despair in Daphne's ear she told:

“How can I want to die
And hie where spirits hie?
Thy tones my senses in their sweetness steep;
The transports of thy voice
My soul from sinking keep.
O that I had the choice
To rest as now with thee,
And as I am, thy own to ever be!

Safe by thy side I murmur not;
No wish beyond, if it were mine to choose,
Lest thee I lose:
So blest thy love there is no better lot!

“Sad though my days may be,
Am not I still with thee?
Thou wouldst recal how once my spirit clomb,
While sleeping by thy side,
To heaven, its living tomb:
But monsters round me glide
And snatch my hopes away,
And mock my prayer the more I seek to pray.
They drive my supplications hence,
Combing their fingers through the snaky curls
Their head unfurls,
And crimson tears shed o'er my penitence.”

“Forgive!” the angel's word:
Where thrilled its answering chord?
Heard was its echo as a sad farewell
To all with love akin.
A fluted ear the knell
Heard strike and sink within:
To memory it clung
Like ill-timed syllables at random rung.

As oft the drear, autumnal wind
Whistles to ghosts to hear its doleful whine,
On Madeline
The warning fell, and died within her mind.

In half eclipse her gaze
Veiled by the filmy haze,
Moves in its transit, as a glowworm meek.
Her spirit goes alone
The exiled hope to seek,
That has already gone.
Still, holding by one ray,—
The last to linger in the wake of day,—
She turns her captive look about
That wanders like a trouble of the brain
In search of pain,
Before her dimmest light, despair, goes out.

With Madeline's sinking sun
The angel's course had run:
What thence befel was like departing day.
So Daphne drooped in night,
And gave her soul away
To hers that took its flight.
Was her sad sister gone?
Yet not to wake and say she died alone!

But Madeline first the death-watch broke:
A moan was heard, the fire within her burned,
Her pangs returned;
The old despair once more the angel woke.

In Madeline's mind she saw
A dull, unringing flaw:
Muffled the once ecstatic note of wo!
In sullen doubt and dread,
With looks that come and go,
The angel's soul she read.
So that ill-fated love
Receding through the past had yet to rove,
And heavenly consolation spurn!
Must vengeance, now at large, full length recoil,
Balked of its spoil,
And still unsated on the avenger turn?

CHORUS.

O that a milder fate
The past might expiate,
And her unholy penance ever cease!
Alas, the hate that clings
No penance can appease
But human offerings!
These work a spell on pain
When all appeal to justice is in vain.

Fate then assumes the single sway,
Lest the tried soul, to utmost fury wrought,
Rend thought from thought,
And on itself the debt of vengeance pay.

VALCLUSA.

Sleep, saucy, hovering drone,
Can sceptred soul dethrone
And rifle of its thought, ephemeral flower
That loves the drowsy wing,
And welcomes it to power,
Oblivion though it bring.
Yet to the soul deposed
Clear sight, mysterious gift, may be disclosed
To filch unwary thoughts that stray
In other souls, and gambol in disguise,
Nor fear surprise;
But deem all hid their solitary way.

Clear sight on Daphne fell,
The workings of the spell
Transporting, as in trance, her senses keen
To Madeline's inmost mind;
To gaze on worlds unseen
With eyes else stony blind,
And secrets to descry
Wondrous as scenes revealed in prophecy.

O sleep, thy wave, at best to tire,
Breaks in successive dreams with night-long zeal,
For woe for weal;
But now is tipped with phosphorescent fire!

Daphne that sleep conjures,
Daphne that sleep endures
Whose hollow eyes survive to gaze at fate,
The darkness to illume,
The madness penetrate;
The misery to exhume
Within the spirit's seat;
To watch the wail its monody repeat.
For sympathy, divinely grand,
Can bridge ethereal ocean and escort,
From port to port,
The visionary sleeper by the hand.

To that ordeal set
Daphne her trial met:
The cup of sorrow crossed her ruby lip;
The dregs of earth she drained!
Who can that chalice sip
By its contents unstained?
Yet did she drink it dry,
To pledge her soul to human charity,

To sink into the bitter death:
Her glazing eyes dilated as they face,
In chill embrace,
The sharp concussion of its rimy breath.

Where fury touched its prime,
Not conscious of its crime,
Her eyes in patient wonder fix their sight;
Like serpents on their prey
On Madeline they alight.
They see the will obey,
Not long to oscillate,
The final cast that dooms her soul to hate.
They see with horror's bristled stare
In angry shade the orb of conscience sweep
The spirit's deep,
And with the passion in its triumph share.

Nor is her view confin'd
To the tormented mind,
Uttering as it ferments a tongue of flame.
She sees what gestures dire
Distort the sufferer's frame,
And register its ire.
Madeline in frantic rage
Enacts these antics on a holy stage,

An angel sleeping in her room.
In its unbridled fires her soul finds vent,
On murder bent;
Led surely on to meet her settled doom.

Her hand a poniard holds
Hid in the restless folds
That from the cincture at her waist descend,
To rustle as they flow;
And with her fury blend;
And with her phrensy glow.
Lit by the vengeful mind,
Their glare is tossed and maddened by the wind.
The flash, with scintillating rays,
Around her robe, asbestos-woven, sweeps;
And as it creeps
To her bright fingers, on the weapon plays.

From Daphne's pallid lid,
A full-grown tear had slid,
Her cheek with sorrow's seed to early sow.
And now the braided tress
In curls begins to flow
Stirred by the wilderness;
While trickle from each pore
Dew-drops that stain their track with limpid gore.

Sighs spread their fluctuating wings
To call down pity on the present hour,
As they outpour
The melody of prayer from broken strings.

Her hands are clasped in pain,
A shrill, heart-rending strain
Impinges terror on the startled air.
Madeline aroused in fright
Beholds her own despair
The angel's visage blight;
The pangs her heart that rack,
A face divine on her reflecting back.
Her eyes transfixed in stony fear,
Through horror's mask she gazes on the trance,
Until her glance
Is clouded over by a frozen tear.

Such anguish well she knows
From her own bosom flows:
And it disarms the rage that gores her brain.
On Daphne's neck she hangs;
Her love implores again:
Benumbed her recent pangs.
She wipes away the tears
One sorrow for another sorrow bears,

And in mute agony relates;
Asks, in remorse, the angel to revive;
Once more to live,
And look upon the one she consecrates!

As from a soul's repose
The angel's eyes unclose.
They open on their morrow; thither led
Lest present they deplore
The vision that had fled,
And sleep on earth no more.
Those scenes had they outrun
As fast as shadows dip before the sun.
Though moth-like scorched those loving eyes,—
Too sentient to endure the world of pain
And life sustain,—
Foreclosed in darkness were their agonies.