University of Virginia Library

CANTO II.

I.

O land of my birth! thou fair world of the West!
With freedom and glory and happiness blest!
Thou nation upspringing from forest and grove,
Like wisdom's armed queen from the brain of high Jove!
Though thy winds are the coldest the North ever blows,
And thy mountains the drearest when covered with snows;
Tho' the warm fount of feeling is chilled while it gushes,
And pleasure's stream frozen as brightly it rushes;
Tho' thy sons, like their clime, are oft chilling and rude
And rough as the oak in their own mountain wood;
Yet I love thee, my country! as fondly as Tell
Loved the Alpine Republic he rescued so well.
For thy yeomen can circle the winter-eve hearth,
Undreading oppression, and talk of the Earth,
Whose bosom yields nurture to father and son
Leaving hearts pure and gay when the glad work is done:
While the pæans they shout over glories by-gone
Are echoed by virtues for ever their own.
O thou home of the rover o'er ocean's rude wave,
Asylum of sorrow and fort of the brave!
Advance in thy glory o'er forest and sea,
Unrivalled, unconquered, heroic and free!
Though the rose bloom and fade in its holiday hour,
And the sun-god is palled in his glory of power
Tho' winter's cold breath blanch the blossoming rose,
Unlike the bright clime where the sky ever glows,
Yet thy virtues bend not to each soothing breeze,
Whose syren song lures through the soft shading trees
Like the gay, grovelling sons of the tropical clime,
Whose skies are all glory—whose earth is all crime.
None love thee so well as thy sons far away,
None bless thee more oft than the bard of this lay.

II.

The sunniest rose that ever blowed
In velvet vale of soft Cashmere;
The loveliest light that ever glowed
O'er heaven in spring-time of the year,
Ne'er blushed and beamed more purely bright
Than gentle Inez' sinless heart
Upon that dread unholy night
When doomed with all it loved to part.
No spirit, gazing from above,
With eyes impearled in pity's tears,
Cherished more heavenly thoughts of love
In glory's highest, brightest spheres.
Than that pure child of love and light,
Dragged, 'neath the covert of the night,
To the dim arch'd refectory;
Where, telling fast their rosaries,
And lifting many a saint-like eye
To heaven with muttered groans and sighs,
The demon conclave met to doom
To living grave, to breathing tomb,
The apostate, suffering, dying nun.
The word hath passed—the deed is done!
Ere morn gleams through the pictured glass
Of prison cell, or o'er the wall
Of dark St. Clara light doth pass,
Dimly and thick and sickening, all
Of that dark bigot band, save one,
Are kneeling at the tapered shrine,
Before the Omniscient's holy throne,
Where every thought should be divine,
To chant their impious prayers to Him,
In whose creation-searching eye
Not even the heavenliest seraphim
Are pure in their great piety!
Alas! that Heaven's most blessed boon,
Religion, breathing peace and love,
In man's polluted heart so soon
The veriest creed of hell should prove!

III.

Unseen, unfelt, unknown, her fate
O'er the fair vestal's head had past,
And she was left all desolate—
The doom was sealed—the die was cast—
Ere, waking from her dreadful dream,
She faintly said—“I heard a scream
“Of death, methought, O Dion! say
“Is Zulma safe?” Then, as she lay
Leaning against the dungeon wall,
She turned—groaned—and fell back again;
“Oh, Dion! love! oh, tell me all,
“Where—where is Zulma?”—Awful pain
Came o'er her then and dimmed the eye
Of yesternight's dread memory,
And through her spirit's drear opaque
She could not look—she could not take
Perception of her agony;
She knew 'twas so—but how or why
It baffled her delirious brain
To tell;—and then she thought again,
And more distinct her memory grew
Of what had passed—and chill the dew
Of death hung on her writhen brow,
Where love still shed its parting glow,
As dim she caught the past and gone;
Yet she could not—the dying one,
Think why she thus was left alone.
She spake again, but faint and low—
“O Dion! thou hast often said
“Thy love could master every woe,
“And o'er all griefs its radiance shed;
“It cannot be that thou should'st now
“Forsake thy love, forget thy vow—
“Now, when I feel—O Dion, come
“And bear me hence—I must go home!”
She listened then for some faint sound,
And strove to rise and look around;
But all was midnight gloom, and she
Alone there in her agony.
Still memory gathered link by link—
And still life's current quickly bled—
With a death-thirst she longed to drink
What flowed around her dungeon bed;
She scooped the fluid in her hand,
And bore it to her lips—'t was blood!
And then her spirit lost command
'Mid horror, gloom, and solitude,
While thought, no words of man can tell,
O'er all the past began to swell,
And well she saw her hopeless doom,
There buried in eternal gloom,
Whence shrillest shriek and wildest cry
Could never reach the shuddering sky.
No missal there nor cross had she,
O'er which to breathe her parting breath;
To cheer her in her misery,
And change to bliss the pangs of death;
For they had banned the dying nun
And barred redeeming penitence!
Demons! their hate her glory won—
Her amulet was innocence!
So malice works its own reward,
And weakest proves when most on guard,
For never yet hath hatred wrought
The deadly ruin which it sought,
Untended by a deadlier blow
Than that which laid its victim low.

IV.

A sound disturbed her solitude—
High chanting from the chapelry;
Like wailings from a gloomy wood
When echoed by a stormy sky,
The distant swell of cloister strain
And matin hymn came o'er her brain,
And roused to life her slumbering pain;
It was her dirge—that morning song,
And slowly rolled the notes along
The cypress groves—the vaults—the cells—
Like murder's midnight groan which tells
The fearful deed most fearfully;
And there the lovely Inez lay
In suffering's last extremity,
While not a solitary ray
Of light relieved the heart-felt gloom
That palled her spirit in the tomb.
It was a mockery of her woe—
The mass of hell yelled out below—
That pæan, like a death-doom sent
Through farthest vault—through deepest cell,
To agonize the punishment
Of the fair one Heaven loved so well.
But oh, no fiend with things can cope
Whom God hath left to their own will—
Giv'n o'er beyond all reach of hope,
At hate's hell-cup to drink their fill;
The deadliest demon, banned the most,
May fill the archangel's holiest throne
Ere mortal once—forever lost,
Can for his damning deeds atone.
The light of heaven may beam o'er hell
Dimly and touch the apostate there;
But man, abandoned, bids farewell
To hope, and weds his own despair.

V.

Another sound the stillness broke,
And Inez' bleeding heart awoke.
It was the wailing of a dove,
The death-song of a simple bird
O'er her who died for heaven and love,
And gladly were the soft notes heard.
Perched on a cypress o'er her cell,
The bird hailed not the glorious sun,
But sadly sung the last farewell
Of the pure, sweet, expiring nun,
To earth and earthly sins and woes
And life so early in its close.
As Inez listened to the strain,
And longed to waft it back again,
The shade of death was in her eye,
The pulses of her being beat
Faintly, and death's last agony
Came o'er her like a shadowy bloom,
A soft voice stealing from the tomb,
A light to guide the parting spirit
Beyond the woes that all inherit.
Feebly she sunk—the crimson tide
Gushed forth no more—her heart was still;
Yet her lips trembled as she died—
“Dion—forgive—my wrongs!” and 'till
Her features sunk collapsed in death
That name was breathed with every breath.

VI.

A taper gleams amid the gloom—
A white-robed form approaches near—
It pauses by the dungeon tomb,
And listens tensely as in fear,
Or hope—and now it moves again
And lifts the iron-bolted grate,
And gazes o'er the cell of pain,
Doubting its lovely tenant's fate.
Demon! go in—thy victim's gone!
Unseen, unheard, like guilt alone,
Clotilde doth listen there awhile,
And then descends—and with a smile
Deadly and dark moves round the corse,
Whose features are an angel's still.
“Dead?—Ay, 'tis well—it had been worse
“Had justice half fulfilled my will
“Or hadst thou lived till now!”—She turned
The lovely vestal's body o'er,
And laughed aloud; and then she spurned
The corse upon its gory floor,
And smiled as if she gave it pain;
And then she raised the beauteous nun—
“Ay, 'tis a blessed fate, sweet one!
“That thou hast wrought thyself—again
“Thou would'st not do the deed!” She threw
The pale, cold corse in scorn away,
And yet more dark her features grew,
As death had robbed her of her prey;
And still she stood, with fiend-like eye,
Revelling in hatred's demon feast,
And with low curse and muttered cry
Banning e'en Him who had released
The vestal from her deadly power
And raised the soul to Eden's bower,
When a loud crash rose high—and far
The echo as of bolt and bar
Shooting, went forth!—Where art thou now,
Proud abbess? Ah! thou soon wilt know!
The iron portal to the cell,
The lifted grate had fallen—how
It nought avails for me to tell;
Perchance, the wind had laid it low,
Or death-winged angel might have thrown
The dreadful bars in anger down,
Eternal justice to dispense
To suffering, murdered innocence.
Howe'er it was—proud Clotilde there
Was doomed to perish with the dead,
In silence, darkness and despair,
And meet the fate her sentence said.
There could be no relief—no, none—
She had gone forth, unseen, alone,
And from that subterranean cell
No cry arose to human ear;
It was a dark monastic hell,
Beyond hope's sun-illumined sphere.
She shook the bars—but they were fast—
She shrieked—but echo mocked her pain;
She gazed around—but shadows past
Like fiends, and she sunk down again.
And then remorse was leagued with fear.
And both like vipers gnawed her heart:
And horrid sounds were in her ear
That cried—“What dost thou here? depart!
“Seek thou the hell of thy dark creed,
“Thine be the doom thou hast assigned,
“The unpitying bigot's bitter meed,
“The quenchless ruins of the mind!
“Depart! depart!” how awful e'er
Is guilt when phrenzied by its fear!

VII.

Unshrived, she there must die in all
Her unforgiven guilt and woe;
On either side a dungeon wall,
And wrath above and death below
Unsoothed, unpitied and alone,
Without a single orison,
Without a tear to mourn her fate,
Or look of grief compassionate,
Or holy right or orris pall
Or requiem chanted forth by all
The holy vestal sisterhood,
Who round her erst admiring stood
As if St. Marie had been given
To them in other form from heaven.
But such be guilt's dark fate for e'er!
She there must perish dust to dust,
Unshriven in the dungeon drear,
Accursed below—among the just
All entrance barred eternally!
Now guilt forestalled redemption's hours,
And madness sprung from agony!
Darkly the storm of misery lowers,
And darker yet it soon shall be;
For Sin uprears her giant form
And mad Remorse, her spectre, stands,
Gashed by the fangs of guilt's dark worm,
Lifting on high his gory hands
To warn too late—to tell at last
The victim that her day hath past,
And yet more awful thoughts arise
More fearful shadows blast her view,
And wilder are her echoed cries,
And colder is the dungeon-dew.

VIII.

Time flies—strength fails—but madness grows
Stronger and darker in its mood,
And fevered Fear delirious throws,
O'er all the gloom a robe of blood;
And now she sinks beside the nun,
There like a song-lulled angel sleeping,
And smiling as her woes were done,
And she in heaven were vigils keeping.
She starts as if an adder stung!
A demon voice of mirth had rung
Through all the chambers of her brain;
She listens—now it comes again,
Blended with laughter wild and rude,
And echoes through the fatal cell,
And cries aloud—“Thy soul's imbued
“With blood of innocence;—'tis well
“That on thy victim's lifeless breast
“Thou should'st sink in eternal rest!”
Her maniac heart could bear no more,
The last extremity had come;
She grovelled on the cold earth floor
In speechless anguish at her doom;
Gazed with a madden'd eye, that told
What horrors o'er her bosom rolled,
Upon the nun who slept as still
As infant that has drank its fill;
Then with a shriek that might appal
The fiend, against the dungeon wall
Dashed headlong—groaned and died!—'Tis past,
The more than mortal suffering.
Alas! I would it were the last!
But earthly minstrel dare not sing
Of fates beyond the farthest ken
Of starry-eyed philosophy;
Among the abodes of mortal men
He finds enough of misery
To break the heart and rack the brain
That feels or thinks of human pain.
Her fate hath past—her soul hath fled—
And peace attend the voiceless Dead!

IX.

Life scarce had parted and her fate
Passed o'er the haughty abbess there,
Ere steps approached the iron grate,
And voices, as in last despair,
Echoed above the fatal cell.—
The portal's raised and they descend,
The sisterhood.—Now note ye well,
Fair vestals! ere ye ween to wend
In sin's broad path, sin's woful end!
The highest bliss of heaven may prove
The bitterest dreg in misery's cup,
And spirits born of heaven and love
By guilt be lost and given up
To state abhorring and abhorred—
And not adoring and adored!
Long was the anxious search and quest
Ere they could trace their abbess there,
And anguish searched full many a breast
As they stood gazing in despair
On murdered and on murderess.
I pause not now to paint the scene—
The natural ills of life suffice
To fill with tears the sternest eyes,
When thought retraces what hath been,
To gloom the heart and cloud the way
That shone so brightly yesterday.
Together from the dungeon cell
The corses were in silence borne,
While lingering tolled the funeral knell,
And sullen echoes moaned forlorn;
And shrouded in their vestments white,
They laid them side by side, and kept
Their vigils through the livelong night,
While breathlessly the dead ones slept,
As softly as two infants, born
Perchance, to be each other's scorn!
The wakeful sisters watched alone,
And many a holy rite was done
To foil the fiend and save the soul
Of her who once held high control
O'er penance stern and vow austere,
For many a long and sinful year.
The lovely innocent that there
Too holy was for grief or prayer,
Lay like a picture of the blest,—
'Twas her last hour and loveliest!
They watched—they prayed—night waned and morn,
Like holy hope in Eden born,
Blushed the stained glass and casement through,
And gave the gloomy scene to view.

X.

To die—to feel the spirit fainting
In the mansions of the breast,
While yet the vivid eye is painting
Life and vigor unpossessed;
To see the mortal frame decaying,
The temple's pillars breaking down,
And know the soul will soon be straying
Over climes and realms unknown;
While warm affection hovers o'er
The couch of death, with wailing prayer
Imploring lengthened life once more
In all the anguish of despair;
And we behold and feel and know
All that is felt for us and yet
Beside perceive the overthrow
Of hopes on which the heart is set,
And picture in our dying hour
Anguish unknown till we are dead,
And conscious, hopeless misery's power,
And tears from being's fountains shed—
Oh, 'tis a time, an hour of gloom
Worse than the midnight of the tomb!
But, ah, 'tis worse to think that we,
The proud, high, sentient lords of earth
Must moulder into dust and be
Or clay or nothing! At our birth
It was decreed that we should die,
But not that we should rotting lie
With every foul and loathsome thing
Blending our ashes.—Fling, oh, fling
My corse in ocean's booming wave,
Or burn it on the funeral pyre,
But lay it not in reeking grave
To glimmer with corruption's fire!
St. Clara's funeral bell is knelling
With the solemn voice of death,
And far the mournful notes are swelling
While from postern far beneath
Issue the white-robed virgin train,
Chanting low the requiem strain,
Over the dark and dismal tomb
Of one in being's roseate bloom,
And one in sallow withered age,
Departed from life's tragic stage.
Where sorrow never wakes to weep,
And ill and wrong distract no more,
And homeless wanderers sweetly sleep,
And hate and pride and pain are o'er,
They lay the vestals finally.
Above them waves a cypress tree,
Intwined with briar and rosemary,
And round them sleep the mighty dead,
Who centuries since forever fled;
A silent nation gone—alas!
Where living thought can never pass.
The ceremonial pomp is past—
The vestals vanish, one by one—
The holy father is the last,
And even he hath slowly gone.
And stillness reigns o'er all the scene,
That is so peaceful and serene;
A stillness greatly eloquent
When pious spirits bow and feel
Delicious melancholy, sent
From heaven o'er all their being steal
With purifying breathings mild;
And they become like little child
Gentle and docile, purely good,
In their communing solitude,
And look from earth to heaven with eye
Of sage reflecting piety,
Comparing man's allotment here
With glories of a brighter sphere.

XI.

XII.

The autumnal sun's rich evening beams
Blush o'er Cantabria's billowy sea,
And Lusian fields and groves and streams,
Like angel smiles, celestially;
And clustering vines hang purpling o'er
The shrubbery-mantled palisade,
And golden orange, cypress hoar,
And cork-tree rough, and yew, whose shade
The dead alone doth canopy,
And sunken glen and dim defile,
Alike in nature's bounties free,
Return the soul-inspiring smile
Of Autumn—queen-muse of the heart!
And as soft evening's hues depart,
Like holy hopes that smile in death,
And twilight robes the fading sky
With beauty felt, not seen—beneath
The spreading palm, the lover's eye
Burns as he tunes his soft guitar,
And sees his own dear maid afar,
Approaching her rose-woven bower
To solemnize love's sacred hour.
And lordly prince and shepherd hind,
And lady proud and simple maid
Enjoy alike the season kind,
When flowers grow lovelier as they fade.
Eve shadows dim the varied scene,
And the calm sunlight wanes away,
While one lone cloud of lustre sheen
Still wears the rays of parting day,
And hangs upon the zenith sky,
Like hope the sad heart lingering by.

XIII.

Looming in shadowy twilight o'er
Tajo's broad bay afar is seen,
Scudding toward the Lusian shore,
A quick, unladen brigantine;
And now it grows upon the eye,
White sail, dark hulk, and swan-like prow;
And swells upon the evening sky
Like castle turreted with snow;
And full the rushing wake is heard,
Blent with command's shrill-uttered word,
And many a heart throbs fondly now
To meet its loves and find its home,
As the light vessel crinckles slow
The waters which no longer foam.
The brigantine is moored—the crew
Are busy, boisterous, glad and gay,
And jovial crowds are there;—but who
Through the dense throng makes rapid way
With looks so proudly desolate?
Tis Zulma, who hath borne her fate
And yet will bear 'till being's close,
All she hath lost and still can lose,
With an unshrinking spirit none
Can tame or crush;—she is alone
In desolation—but she bears
Her lofty brow unblanched, and throws
Around an eye undimned by tears,
And, as she hurries on, she grows
Stronger, as if her spirit stood
Prepared for woe of all degree,
And agony and solitude,
And horror, and deep misery.
With hurried step though tearless eye,
She came, where still the massy towers
Of her own convent rose before her
And cast time's deepened shadows o'er her.
From many a tongue too soon she heard
The fatal story of the past,
Told too with many a needless word,
That fell like Lybia's desert blast.
Zulma shrieked not, but fiercely rolled
O'er brain and heart the worst—the last
Wild storm of ruin; hope fell dead,
And her high spirit 'neath its own
Intensity was crushed; she said
Nothing responsive—sigh nor groan,
Nor scream nor cry was heard; she threw
Her bleeding eye to heaven and bowed
A moment as in prayer—then grew
Like desperation calm.—A crowd,
As toward St. Clara's towers she went,
Followed in mute astonishment
That she should thus defy despair
And her own certain ruin dare.
Soon ceased their marvel—Zulma came
Beneath the window of her cell,
And upward gazed—and sighed the name,
The memory of the victim nun
The loved, the lost, the lonely one,
Who shed o'er life the only spell
The true heart loves and prizes well.
And as she gazed with mournful eye
On dusky wall and cypress grove,
The soul whose pride could never die,
The spirit of immortal love
That never sheds a human tear,
Was journeying to a holier sphere.

XIV.

“Jesu Maria! who art thou?
“Christ and the Virgin shield us now!”
A war-steed dashes through the throng—
A horseman leaps upon the ground,
And rushes like a maniac strong
Toward dying Zulma, while around
Gather the crowd to mark the scene—
For one so mournful ne'er had been.
Zulma looked up—a faint smile passed,
Like silvery moon-beam on the wave,
O'er lip and eye and then it cast
Behind the death hue of the grave.
Low bowed the horseman, Julian, there,
And fearful was his agony;
He kneeled, like statue of despair,
In hopeless, speechless misery;
But quivering lips and burning brow
Were worse than vain and idle now.
“Zulma”—he said at last, but wild
Came then the memory of his shame,
And Zulma's eye so proudly smiled
He trembled but to speak her name,
For she was calm as all must be
Who triumph o'er the demon—man,
And hold their pride and purity
Above corruption's blight and bann.
But life was ebbing fast away
From Zulma's broken heart and now,
While yet was left a conscious ray
Or never more his words must flow.
He spake at last—his words were few
But full of dark remorseful power,
The out-pourings of the soul's mildew,
That taints each lovely blooming flower,
Making all life a waste!—The fire
Of being, that had sunk and waned
In Zulma's bosom, burned again
Brightly a moment and there reigned
A majesty 'mid all her pain
That daunted Julian, as she strove
To rise upon a maiden's breast;—
“Prince Julian! that thou had'st my love,
‘And that in thine I was most blest,
'Tis bootless now to own; my doom
“Is sealed forever and the tomb
“Must be the resting-place of one
“Who once—who yet loves thee alone;
“Thou hast my pardon while I live—
“Forgive thyself as I forgive!”
Backward she fell—faint grew her breath,
Life left her cheek, her brow, her eye;
Slow o'er her heart came chilling death—
Zulma is in eternity!