University of Virginia Library

Days, weeks and months passed o'er me and were seen
Vanishing eternally with a smile,
That formed itself against the spirit's will,
So glad was I to feel that burden, Time,
Dropping from my pierced heart; for I did live
Among, but yet not with the living—tears
Suppressed within the fountains of the soul,
Hardened like crystal rills in cavern-hall,
And fell in icy particles upon
My burning heart, yet melted not but lay
Unmoving there, and chilled each feeling, hope,
Desire and aspiration that arose.
My being passed 'mid shadows, and the things
Familiar once assumed, or unknown form
Or appendage, unknown, and to my eye
The faces erst beloved appeared like those
Imagination images in dreams;
And oft I feared to speak, lest I should be
Abandoned to my woe; and, if I spake,
My voice re-echoed round me like the cries
Of desperation 'mid a dirge. My brain
Was fevered with my dreadful anguish, which
Grew by repression, like the camomile,
Until it mastered reason, or whate'er
Name that observant faculty doth bear
Whose power is o'er the visible universe.
There was a dread, unmeasured, in my thought,
A vague idea of something horrible,
Which I dared not examine lest it should
Prove real; and I lived like one in sleep,
Forever searching for some lost companion,
And wandering in mazes till the eye
Refuses to direct, and hope expires.
Yet amid all the estranging of my love
I still clung to my child; a mother's heart
Retains its deep devotion to her dear
And pang-bought offspring, when the woman's mind
Is laid in ruins; and her bosom burns
With love instinctive for an innocent
And lovely creature whom her spirit knows
Only as something worthy to be loved.
Folding the orphan to my heart, I went
Abroad the mansion witlessly, and searched
Its chambers desolate, and then returned
In wildered disappointment that the thing
I looked for could no where be found.—I sat
In the lone winter nights before the dim
And melancholy embers, and did hush
My breath while listening for the tread of him
Who ever spent his evenings with his love
In social converse;—but he came not, so
I sighed and murmured to my prattling babe
That he would soon return; but then I thought
That he had gone to a far land and left
His duties unto me, and that I must
Discharge them as became our vow of love.
And so I oped his escritoir and saw
His papers, pens and pencils and all things
Disposed e'en as he left them, and I felt
That I could not arrange them otherwise
If they were wrong;—his closet then I searched
And there his vestments hung familiarly
And appositely arrayed;—I returned
From such short wanderings sad, and sometimes thought
My love had told me he should dwell no more
Upon the earth—and then my heart did feel
As if it floated in a lava sea.
Thus passed my strange existence from the day
He died until disease my infant laid
Upon his suffering couch, and I became
His sleepless watcher. Long I sat beside
The lovely one, attending all his wants
And sick caprices uncomplainingly,
Yet all unconscious that he was my son,
Till one said he was dying—then there flashed
Through my dark spirit thoughts of past, and tears
Profuse quenched the destroying fire that burned
Within my heart and brain; I backward looked
And saw my desolation, and yet felt
Happy contrasted with the awful state
I had awaked from; life hath direful ills
And woes and sufferings, but the fiercest lie
In madness, e'er in dread of heaven and earth.
It cannot weep—it doth not think, and yet
It hath both tears and thoughts, the one of blood,
Of pangs the other; all its feelings coil
Like serpents round the heart and sting the core
Unceasingly, and all the sweet ideas
Of love and friendship round the racked brain twine
Like knotted adders, venomous and blind.
Pierce, O Thou Holy One! the heart but spare
The spirit! Let thy judgments fall upon
The affections, but preserve the immortal soul!

My child was spared me; and the tale I tell
Was gathered from the loved ones who beheld
But could not mitigate my woe, and those
Impressions I retain of sights and sounds
That floated by me in bewilderment.