University of Virginia Library

III.

“Philosophy be now mine only bride,
Pent in by cloister walls on every side,
More than a man in mind, but less in frame;
Fulbert, thy vengeance crowns despair with shame.
I never shall be what I might have been:
Walking with hope love knew no fear between.
Some, like the snake, that fears for his sweet mate,
Dread their own kiss, and feel love mixed with hate;
Their sighs seem poison, murder their embrace,
Yet their heart overflows with wells of grace;
Their will at variance with itself, they nurse
Destruction wreathed with love, the supreme curse.
In such sweet hope and fear wage piteous strife,
Doubt and self-knowledge sap the joys of life;
But I, whom hope and love led hand in hand,
Whose toil was joy, whose joy was self-command,
Whose single spirit nursed no deathless feud,
Who loved companionship and solitude,
I, like a snake mangled and impotent,
Turn on my vitals mine own discontent.
And she, the free bird, prisoned like her mate,
Beats on the bars her wings disconsolate,
The priestess of a creed she knows untrue,
No star to cheer the midnight of her view,
Devote to vows she cannot count sincere,
Living a false life in an unfit sphere;
Hedged with stone-walls that shut the sunlight out,
Though a worse prison compasses about
Her soul, and from all high communion parts,
A hard flint wall of narrow human hearts.
Poor bird, she spends the daylight dreaming of
My withered glory, and her broken love,
The marriage forced upon her, and our child—
My brain and heart at war make riot wild,
Despair grows too like hope in thoughts like these.
Back to thy fate, my heart; stagnate and freeze,
Till death unlock thy stream and let thee flow
Warm to the deep sea, whither all things go;
Then thou shalt clasp her, or with quiet breath
Sleep in the shadows of the fields of death.
And future ages at thy name shall say,
He lived in anguish, and he passed away
From a dark life by a mean death removed;
“But he had glory, and he was beloved.”