Madeline :: :: University of Virginia Library

VALCLUSA.
So did the Furies in their rage abate,
But left the soul adept though desolate.
Tranquil once more in that too short release,
Madeline regains an interval of peace.
Like the vast ocean struggling fate behaves:
Her course one stream, while intermit the waves.

CHORUS.

Who on the ruffled tides
Before the tempest glides,
No upward gaze to face the polar star
That yet the bark had saved?
Whose end, now not afar
Is on the tempest graved?
The bark with fluttering sail
Still scuds along in lonely passion's trail!

100

Madeline, whom fate all chance denied,
Had struggled as no other strove for love,
Nor rose above
The vulgar lot to suffer till she died.

She long was drawn from harm;
No unavailing charm
The angel's faith that long the wreck delayed!
With doom she wrestled on,
And oft its anger stayed,
And oft its pity won.
Yet she who keeps her pure
Scarce aids her soul its tortures to endure.
Sad is the presence of a saint!
Placed in its light is wailed the early sin,
That shrinks within,
Till self-repression chafes at all restraint.

So time drags on the chain.
The morn comes home again,
The even rests upon the weary globe:
The sun in spangles gay,
The moon in vestal robe,
Had each its holiday.
The winds still gently blew,
The groves their laurels wove in wreaths anew.

101

The rocks frowned o'er the stream untired,
The bard still watched his Daphne not afar,
His true lode-star;
And Madeline's wrong his quenchless anger fired.

VALCLUSA.

Reclining side by side
Two loving hearts divide
One peaceful beat, and share the self-same smile;
One time in breathing keep;
One dream along defile
Within the world of sleep:
Like symbols of the mind
Their rosy arms around each other twined.
In this new sympathetic state
They hold discourse, in question and reply,
And oft say, Why?
As with closed lids and open hearts they prate.

Each other's words they chase
In aptly chiming pace,
Then long they pause and cut the dream in twain;
Then, where they parted, meet,
And recommence the strain,
By absence rendered sweet.
Ideas with trouble fraught
Down in the filmy arms of sleep are caught;

102

Ideas, by these displaced below,
Uprise and to the level surface speed,
Like floating weed,
And the translucent margin overflow.

The spirit's ebbing tide
With buoyant thoughts they ride,
And take their pleasure to its listless falls.
One to another's eyes
A happy scene recals;
A happy scene replies;
One to another's ears
Invokes a better world, and heaven appears.
And now their steps the rise ascend:
In prints of angels' feet they run away,
At first in play;
But stop for breath before their journey's end.

The will on nothing set,
They turn without regret
To give their lips and tongues a faster play,
That lighter truth resolves;
And all they think they say
As memory revolves:
The future and the past
In novel moulds of mingled feeling cast.

103

“Once more to choose should it be thine,
Wouldst thou to earth this kindly visit pay?”
The answer, Nay!
But not with earnest smile although divine.

“Born to diffuse the grace
Of thy celestial race,
Yet truly wouldst thou, man himself to save,
Revisit earth and me?
To languish by the grave,
Though brief the term might be,
Then sum up all, above,
In one deep sigh of unrequited love!
Oh, if to choose once more were thine,
Wouldst thou, indeed, this tristful visit pay?”
The answer, Nay!
With yet less earnest smile, though more divine.

“Thou who didst pine to know
The pains endured below,
Couldst never more to this sad scene return,
To taste again of death;
To share the poet's urn,
To share the poet's wreath!
Let fate the suppliant keep,
And still pursue in waking and in sleep!”

104

But as the thought o'er slumber crept
The angel turned; in her a jarring note
Its utterance smote,
And her bruised ear in silent reverie kept.

On her begins to gleam
A dream within a dream.
An unborn slumber strangely felt in sleep
Lies quickening in the mesh
That drags oblivion's deep.
Nor came its breathings fresh.
It held her whom she served;
The dagger poised, the heart to vengeance nerved.
But that blank look which gazer chides
Ruled in the eyeball; as a statue's, bold
As it is cold:
Madeline in that hereafter which it hides.

And not less harsh a stream
Ran through the other's dream.
Her feet meandered with a pebbly shoal
Whose waters, seen before,
Were striving for some goal,
Though beating on its shore.
It was the golden beach
She long had tried, she long had failed to reach.

105

Then asked she, They who here begin,
Strict to the hour of prayer, the hour of song,
Lost in the throng,
Can they forget the memory of sin?

She paused on that sad thought,
For no response it brought.
Then from the broken theme she tasked discourse
Up to its babbling spring.
Unguarded was the source,
Nor thence 'twas hard to wring
A secret safely kept
Till wisdom in the angel's bosom slept.
“Tell me who dwells in yonder tower!
The restless winds flow thence across my brain
In gusts of pain:
Who can express the terror of their power!”

Unwary in her rest,
In thrilling tones addrest,
The angel whispers the seducer's name.
Now twangs the chord of hate:
The hour designed for shame
Struck by a watchful fate.
Shame, with a sudden rush,
Drowns the fair sleeper in its purple blush.

106

Silent she lies, her efforts vain
To speak or move; too early or too late,
For on her sate
An incubus and bound her with a chain.

A lifetime intervenes
With its few chequered scenes;
And these begin, glide on, and touch her prime;
Take fortune's rapid turns;
All in a flash of time
That scarce a moment burns.
An age appears its gleam;
The whole past blank relighted by a dream.
She enters now an hour unborn,
Bursting the future track that fate's decree
Had ruled to be:
The way untrod and yet for footsteps worn.

After a lapse of time
She utters thus her chime:
“He walks a sea of blood with ruby shore,
All carmine to the sky.
He sinks to rise no more.
Will he be let to die?
He drowns as now I gaze:
My eyes look on, intoxicate and glaze.

107

I must be gone, not idle stand
On these enchanted sands to count the beats
My heart repeats;
The loud reveillé tells the hour at hand!”

At this a trumpet's sound
The angel's heart winds round;
It echoes through her present memory
To when her life began:
In heaven was its reply.
The ghosts that slumber span,
Like voidings from the grave,
In terror pass; her soul becomes their slave.
By their relentless power appalled,
She looks on death, and to its dread event
Her will is bent,
As one whom fate had conquered and enthralled.

She who had lived to bless,
Gazed on the pitiless,
In anguish clinging to her mortal state.
Above her stood the Form,
Her heart to immolate
And scatter in the storm,
To dust her beauty change:
Her grave to be the whirlwind's sunless range.

108

Yet, as she swooned in sight of Death,
Her eyes saw heaven, not merciless or cold,
Its clouds unfold;
And in that trance she sighed away her breath.

CHORUS.

Ah, not in wanton mood
She gave up selfish good,
When none had envied her, though rich her store!
She pined her heart to train
In seats of human lore
And minister to pain.
Was there not much to learn?
The prize, now won, how hard alas, to earn!
But through her passport ran the grace
To meet this hour, to triumph at its end
As woman's friend,
And better than she left, her path retrace.