University of Virginia Library

I saw to-day a man upon his back
Beneath a tree, watching the sailing track
Of quails and pigeons in the smoke-blue sky;
And as their wings dipt deeper or more high
Above the shining leaves, I knew the man
With dizzying eyes more thoughtfully would scan
The heaven's blue burning till he fell asleep,
For all the day the heavens with light grow deep.
I knew that if a bittern or a quail
With shortened wings and pouncing feet should sail
Down through the air and settle on the tree,
The man would sleep no more, but suddenly
Spring up and drag his bow-case from his head.
Behold me in the life I sometime led!

I know not how I sinned: what man can know
All he has sinned? but very long ago,
In the beginning of my bootless tale,
Found I myself weeping without avail,
As who begins to live, and with a sense
Of long, long love, now reaching prevalence.
One lay beside me on a little mound,
Marsh marigolds and river reeds were round,
And three hours ere the snnset, and not far
A river rippling over a sandbar;
Gleaming the spacious shallows of its tide,
As if the moving were a breeze inside;
The purple shadows trembling through and through,
Above, around us, who were trembling too.
Who lay beside me on the little mound?
My hands were beating on the harmless ground:
Weeping, why wept I in the golden air,
So passioned in the depths of what despair?
He, strange companion, heeded not at all;
Prostrate he lay, as he were past recall
For weariness; one knee was bent and raised,
And ever upwards at the blue he gazed
Where small white clouds went on. How bitter-sweet,
How bitter; but I will not use deceit,
I will not hide, nor tell how, after this
Long years, betrayed by a Judas kiss,
Sent me kiss-stung and madding through the world:
For who would curse? Have I found peace upcurled
In yond volumen I illuminate?
I will not bid my saint a moment wait,
Whilst I in his grim acts interpolate
A weaker man and unappointed fate.
So there's my monogram in silence put
Upon the page in which my life is—shut:
And when ye take my volume from the shelves,
And stare upon it while ye cross yourselves,
Think thus upon the painter, simple friends:—
He was a man at quiet war with fiends,
Ora pro animâ, he painted here:
This is a morn in spring; how high uprear
To meet the blue our white-brown convent walls,
And from them a translucent shadow falls
O'er half the cell; and what a diaper
The little leaves and branches all astir
With sunshine, pour upon the picture screen!
He painted here, happy he must have been;
He was a good man and did visions see,
A quiet man without a history;
Think thus, and pity me, and pray for me.

Ay, and this morn in spring, midst this design
To which I thought was given this life of mine,
Stirring the quiet sunshine of my cell,
Something across the blazoned parchment fell:
A shadow, not flung down from swinging bough,
I caught it; 'twas the arching of a brow,
And gloss of purple hair was what I saw,
And stealing footsteps, which could not withdraw:
What! she, that trembler whom one sees about
Our gates, who bows and tries to look devout?
And he, our latest joined, whose flesh is weak?
Well, sin no more; I am not one to speak.