University of Virginia Library

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188

ANNETTE MEYERS.

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The attribution of this poem is questionable.

Oh, never till such forms, half-flame, half-night,
Into life's shadowy nooks fling meteor-light,
Know we what Woman is, what Woman can,
The counterpart-antagonist of Man!
True e'en in common life her lot may teem
With things that sound, if uttered, like a dream.

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189

But dark and trackless, dreary, low, and long
The pathway of her suffering and her wrong,
Obscure distress, that by the world severe
Is brought to daylight only for a sneer.
And she, as Duty taught to view the task,
Herself adopts the miserable mask;
Can rival man in her deceptive zeal,
Laughing to scorn what she's forbid to feel.
Yet oft when, cased in that cold mail of pride,
She casts like cobwebs olden ties aside,
Her heart, for all the iron case above,
Swells with strong achings to forgive and love;
And when the sternly severing words she writes,
Still dreams of meeting tears and reconciled delights.
And, though the struggles of that twofold state
A strange and bitter semblance may create,
Yet is the bitterness more love than hate.

This mood no anger cures; insulting wrong
May drive her mad, but cannot harden long.
All that makes savage men, or makes them wise,
Can ne'er her weak fond mould unwomanize.
Of something loftier were this mood the sign,
The calmness of a charity divine,
'T would bear her, as the swelling waves uplift
The ship that trusts them, o'er their stormy rift.
Yea, on its wings forgiver and forgiven
Might both be wafted within sight of heaven.
But, oh, most useless of all useless things
Are those wild impulses, whose sealed-up springs

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190

With wayward longings trouble woman's breast,
Powerless to act, unblessing and unblest,
Tossed to and fro in weak, uncertain state—
Loving, alas! because she cannot hate.

Yet oft, when man inflicts and woman bears
The hardest wrong, the fault is fate's, not theirs—
As but obeying Nature's saddest laws,
Unconscious actors from an unknown cause.
For change will wither hearts once warm and fond,
And Time will wear, and Mischief snap the bond.
Error, blind god, makes sport of things too deep,
Too delicate, for his rude hands to sweep,
And blindfold stumbles into fatal deeds;
What is, is hidden, and what's seen misleads.
The soul speaks not, and outward acts speak wrong,
Silence seals all, and the world drives along.
So may a heart warm, tender, innocent,
Be wholly blighted—by an accident.
Another's hand may wring it to the core,
Till it bleeds tears, and then may wring it more;
May do it to the end, nor e'er repent,
Nor yet the while be guilty in intent.

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191

For half the wounds we deal, the ill we do,
The error we believe, we never know,
And take for our most wise and prudent deeds
Our worst mistakes whence harshest wrong proceeds.

A sad and quiet sympathy attends
The tale's beginning that so blackly ends.
How love, from its first mystic birth—a slow
Sweet growth,—o'erspread her life, all women know:

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192

How he who sowed it made that sweetness turn
To bitter ashes, must too many learn:
But to what horror it could change, could stir
All hell within her, few have proved like her.

Of parentage half-foreign, born in France,
Her birth a crime, her bringing up a chance,
Seed by the wayside, growing strong and wild—
She lived a lonely, not unhappy child.
The girl to England came, in service found
A refuge for a while from perils round.
Her earnest soul her duties strove to meet,
And a kind mistress made those duties sweet.
True and devoted on its tasks it spent
Its silent fervour and was so content:
The slumbering fire no fiend as yet betrayed—
A trusted, loving, gentle servant-maid.
But a sweet seeming fiend stole in ere long,
In still ideal form and yet how strong.
That dreamlike being long it seemed to keep,
Nestling, a child, within her heart asleep,
Yet breathing all around an atmosphere
Of sweetest fancies, making all things dear.
She loved a soldier—handsome, lively, young—
Her heart's depths listened while his passion sung:
He led her swiftly, joyously, awhile,
Along luxuriant paths, all bloom and smile—
Charmed feet still dancing at the tempter's call,
Loving and trusting—onward to her fall!

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193

How trace the sequel that from worse to worse,
With progress certain as a prophet's curse,
Goes stair by stair down flights of misery
That only they who suffer ne'er foresee?
The tenfold consciousness of sin that grew
When all her soul was lost for, perished too—
Those first days of desertion—wretched child!
When with astonished grief her soul ran wild;
The long, long blanks—the torturing meetings then—
A rush of frenzy—and long blanks again!
The heart, grown fierce with all that it had borne,
That longed to see him, to upbraid and scorn,
With its own flames to burn the torpid heart,
Shame with its guilt the shameless—and then part!
Yet proving, by the nerves that quivered so
Even with wrath, the source from which they grow
Still to be love's irradicable woe;
The cold and bitter words, in turn exchanged,
By her love outraged and his love estranged—
While still her eye hung madly on his form,
And 'neath the storm heaved yet a fiercer storm—
Such were the meetings now their passion gave,
Such all her lonely droopings had to crave!

Yet then the dreary moment when 't was over,
The longed for, prayed for meeting with her lover,
That dreaming hope had into ages spun;
How short, how vain, how nothing, when 'twas done!
When the dark night had come down on the day,
And all she loved, oceans behind her lay.

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194

And the long sunny days when all alone
She walked for hours of anguish up and down,
Wringing clenched hands that ached with the soul's pain,
And in choked accents o'er and o'er again,
Crying the same wild cry where'er she trod,
“Have pity on me, oh, my God! my God!
Oh bring him back! oh let us meet again!”
No power had she to change that constant strain.
Then in the safe blind hours when others slept,
All the dark night how hopelessly she wept,
Bound by a stifling chain she could not break;
It was as if a spirit lay awake
Bewailing in the darkness of the tomb,
Her body dead, her soul, amid the gloom,
Feeling a fearful life—the presence of a doom.

Let Reason wonder that a wretch so base
Should in that nobler heart still keep his place.

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195

She reasoned not, but felt, by what strange law
Love e'en from poison nourishment can draw.
She saw him changed, she saw he was no more,
Who, pure or seeming so, woke love as pure.
Yet had those changes not the power to change
The passion rooted whence it could not range;
But grievous mischief in her soul it wrought—
The thing she saw, and that on which she thought,
The fiend she hates, the idol she adores,
Joined in one form that still her fancy lures.
And hence it came that love for aught so ill
Debased itself, and her it fettered still.
The soul that spends itself on viler things
Must catch a stain from that to which it clings.

Look on her now; thou need'st not fear to see
How meek and passive wretchedness can be.
The neat attire, the staid, submissive mien,
Remind us what so long Annette had been:
The faithful servant-maid, esteemed so well,—
Now what? a murderess in her prison-cell!

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196

Yet that wan lifeless creature, can she be
The being of such tragic energy?
Beneath such torpor can such fervour dwell?
No,—for thou only seest an empty shell;
At once a gravestone did her being cover,
When her dead lover's face said, “All is over!”
One of those souls was hers that in their course
Hold a subdued and intermittent force,
That, living in the shadow of their power,
Show in a sudden frenzy for one hour,
As if compelled by Fate, the intense flame
That lay coiled-up within their inmost frame,
Then, still through Fate, not will, the passion o'er,
Return into the dark and burn no more.

'T is the still time when the day falls asleep;
She sits and seems a sullen calm to keep;
Till rises, softly looking on her woe,
The young moon in the sky, a spot of snow.
She sees and feeling wakes, the past returns,
But pale, as though from haunts of funeral-urns.
A cloud of tears comes quickly o'er her eyes,
And in that mist the moment's vision dies.
'T is finished! she can but the words recall
Traced at that crisis: “Love has done it all!”
Poor child! who fain wouldst wander back to what
Is lost, renounced, and ruined—not forgot:
A spectre stands between thy past and thee;
Thou canst no more the young dear lover see,

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197

Only the dead heap that thy vengeance made,
Stiff earth that now thou canst not e'en upbraid—
The pistol whose sharp ring thy tale made known,
Hurled down upon the corpse as on a stone—
Thou in a dreadful triumph standing there alone!

Forgive her, man! proclaim not to the sun
How stern is justice to the injured one.
Shall her young blood, in stare of thousands spilt,
Wash out the madness caused by other's guilt?

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198

The life whose course scarce aught save evil saw,
Mangled by love, oh, kill it not by law!—
The prayer is heard—the forfeit-life restored,
The wretched remnant yet to be endured.
In apathy she hears the new decree
That cannot change that past Eternity.
What will become of her concerns her not,
She has outlived her world, annulled her lot.
To far-off climes the victim they remove;
Annette, her broken heart and murdered love,
Are in the swallowing gulf of Exile lost,—
Pale shades that have the severing ocean crost,
From lands for ages by such tales defiled,
To plant strange memories in the vacant wild,
Where she, there ceasing e'en to dream or crave,
Through aimless life must wander to her grave.