The Legend of Genevieve :: :: University of Virginia Library

The shades of night are hastening down,
To steep in blue the mountains brown,
The sky is cloudless, and serene;
The winds are pillowed; and the scene
So beautiful, so wild, so sweet,
Where forests, fields, and waters meet,
Is bathed in such delicious hues,
Beneath the twilight's falling dews,
That man, afar from Sorrow's sphere,
Might muse away his anguish here;
While, o'er his erring thoughts subdued,
That quiet—tranquillizing mood,
That tone of harmony would steal,
Which poets feign, and angels feel.

193

Earth answers to the hues above—
The music ceases in the grove;
While not a breeze, in wandering, stirs
The branches of the silent firs,
That stretch their azure cones on high,
And shoot into the lucid sky.

There is no living motion round,
Save, that, with meek and mellow sound,
The shaded river murmurs on,
'Tween banks with copsewood overgrown;
Athwart its bed, the willow throws
The brightness of its pendent boughs,
And hangs, with melancholy air,
And languid head, its tresses there;
Like Guilt, that feels remorse endure,
Performing penance to be pure.—

Lo! in the south, a silver star,
With amber radiance, shines afar;—
The eldest daughter of the night,
In glory warm, in beauty bright.
Thou diamond in the pathless dome
Of azure, whither dost thou come?—

194

Far—far, within the orbless blue,
A tiny lustre twinkles through,
With distant and unsteady light,
To catch the eye, then mock the sight;
Till—as the shades of Darkness frown,
And throw their viewless curtains down,
The very veil that mantles earth,
Awakens thee to brighter birth,
And bids thee glow with purer ray,
A lily on the tomb of Day!

With outlines palpable, and clear,
And, 'mid the lowering darkness drear,
Above the forest, rise sublime
The gothic towers of olden time;
Through lattices, unframed, looks forth
The calm, pure azure of the North,
Unbroken, save where, dark and down,
The ivy tendrils hang, and frown;
And Time, with mimic finger, weaves
A natural lattice-work of leaves.
What, marvel, then, that trembling Fear,
In many a grot, and cavern here,
Should hold her solitary reign,
To scare the natives of the plain,

195

And people every lonesome glade,
With many a mute, and wandering shade.
Lo! in the convent's dewy cell,
What time awoke the vesper bell,
The homeward-stalking peasant hears,
Beneath the moonlight of the spheres,
Strange music on the breezes swim,
A low—a wild—a wailing hymn,
Soaring, and sinking, like the breeze
Among December's leafless trees;
Nor backward is his mind to dream,
In passing, that strange faces gleam
From every frowning cranny there—
As throbs his heart, and stirs his hair,
With quicken'd step he hastens on,
For well he knows, in ages gone,
When sackcloth-vested abbots sway'd,
And Rome was mighty and obey'd,
That there unholy deeds were done,
Perceived by few, and told by none,
And oft the restless spirits sweep,
When storms are dark, and night is deep,
Amid the gothic aisles, where rest,
In charnel cell, their bones unblest.

196

The blue horizon circles round
This silent spot of fairy ground;
So hush'd, that even my very breath
Intrudes upon the still of death!
No trace of mind or man is here,
The sight to win, the heart to cheer;
Like him, who, on Fernandez, sate,
Lamenting o'er his lonely fate,—
While, in the hush of winds, the roar
Of Ocean thundering on the shore
Was heard, the only living sound,
To break the deep, and dull profound,—
So here I rest; no tempests roll
Above my head, or in my soul,
A musing heart, and watchful eye,
Conversing with the earth, and sky.