Madeline :: :: University of Virginia Library

Is she unhappy? No!
Hers is a hidden wo.
She loves him still, now free of passion's snare.
So let her conscience lie
Coiled up exempt from care,
As if uncast the die!
Heaven is at times content
To hide from view what man might else repent,
Though far removed from his controul:
Whence, in this act, was memory set at rest,
Not to attest
To deeds committed in the dark of soul.

Urged onward in her fate
To dream her love to hate,
Shall reason blame her in discourses vain,
With its poor sayings why:

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A fester called the brain
The laws eternal try?
These words the angels spake:
We saw the wave of retribution wake
With Madeline on its swollen crest,
Pillowed in dream and mounted to disband,
With guided hand,
An unrelenting sinner to his rest.

Fate was within all change;
Far sweeping was its range;
When Madeline, conscious of her heart's repose,
By Daphne's side reclined,
Till from that tomb she rose.
Two souls in death entwined
No more to separate:
Nor long they lay locked up in marble state.
Then timely rent the mortal seam,
That they at length in purity might vie,
As once they die,
And leave in sculpture their immortal dream.

One silent day is all
That bears in heaven their pall.
They winter in its sunshine, though its fire
Warm not their cold remains.

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On the funereal pyre,
Set free all mortal pains,
The relict Slander springs
And consecrates to death his burning wings.
Reluctant to survive the end!
That none the broken shaft hereafter throw,
Or palsied bow
Across the ashes of the dead distend.

Unknown to them their sleep,
As unborn Nature deep,
The angel first broke through its solid gloom.
Her gaze the dawn renewed
Within the sleeper's room,
When Madeline's breast she strewed
With green-winged budded rose,
Soon like her eyes its petals to unclose.
And not to greet that joy alone,
Upon a mother's heart, then cold as clay,
A babe she lay,
Its smiles on her to shower when morrow shone.

The angel early gave
A signal at the grave:
Morn's virgin ray had scarcely crossed the face
Of her who held her breath

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In soft sepulchral grace,
That figured early death,
When she the trumpet blew,
The bud once plucked in blossom to renew.
Three angels in advance arise;
They lead the narrow way, to earth unseen
That lies between
Immortalising forms and paradise.

Their arms each other round,
Those three in one are bound,
And face to face they drag their comely rays
Along a sunlit sky,
That scarce their path betrays.
Yet, like a galaxy,
Vast wonders they display;
New heavens create for earths that pass away.
And ever they reveal fresh charms,
In circling beauty, to each other's love;
And float above
Linked in the sweetness of each other's arms.

CHORUS.

Faith is the name of one:
In soul the most alone.

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A cross her vision fills and unerased
Within her ever burns:
By her its symbol chased
On cinerary urns.
No doubt her being chills
That with its raptures all creation fills.
The elder of this triple throng,
Her eyes as marble dim, and cold her sight
To Nature's light,
She seems scarce kin to those she dwells among.

Then Hope with beams that dance
Athwart her pearly glance!
As through the leaves the fitful glimmer plies,
She lights the shades of love
With sun-drops from her eyes,
And draws all hearts above.
They who desire to live,
Though fleeting be the wish, in her survive.
The voice of Nature calls on her
From the round earth, and when she is not near
Is she most dear;
And all aspire to be her passenger.

And how less dreamy she
The younger of the three!

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She envies not, and all her bounty hides
The more all hearts to move.
She vaunts not, nor she chides,
For all her words are love.
Charity never fails,
She all outlives and over all prevails.
And she alone can never die!
With a career and destiny sublime
That outstrips time,
She lingers ever in eternity.

VALCLUSA.

Their path the pilgrims find,
And with no careworn mind
As when the euthanasia was at hand.
For films of fancy spun
By the sweet triple band,
Are into traces run
To drag a load of love;
The web by heavenly machinations wove.
The gossamer in glistening strings
Drawn out like ray from ray and thought from thought,
So finely wrought,
Waves to and fro on its ethereal wings.

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The three, with welcome, greet
The way-worn pilgrims' feet,
And bear them upwards as they pass the knell.
Burst then was Nature's tie;
But garbs were left to tell
Of those for once who die.
Their stoles they leave behind,
And in the phosphor clouds their members bind.
There they abide the frisky team,
Broke in the sun for pilgrims on their way
To distant day,
Whence earth seems gilded over like a dream.

Soft beads of evening dew
The jointed cords bestrew,
And glisten with an image of a star.
The loose, tenacious thread
Gets tangled in the car
Which holds the souls once dead,
Who, through the realm of night,
Take with the laughing babe their rapid flight,
Bound for the verge of paradise.
They give one look at earth before they move;
One look of love;
Then, like a wain, in right ascension rise.