University of Virginia Library

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.