Orval, or The Fool of Time :: :: University of Virginia Library

Where mountains shut the silence up, a milk-white maiden stood:
Her face was like a light, and kindled all the solitude.
And while the wild white mountain flowers turned passionately pale,
And while the chilly water ran reluctant to the vale,
And the bald eagle, near the sun, stood still on some tall peak,
That milk-white maiden to her own sweet face began to speak:

“O face, sweet source of all my care,
Fair face (because I know thee fair!)
If I knew thou should'st be kist
By any husband, wither'd, old, and grey,
I would wander, mist-like, with the mist,
The monstrous mountain many a league away,
Until, in some abandon'd place,
Where the starved wolf cracks the bones
Of perisht men, and the wind groans
For want of something to devour,
I should find, wild in the wind,
Among the blotcht and mildew'd stones,

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The harsh-blowing absinth flower;
And pluck the stubborn root of it,
That from the bitter fruit of it
I might the blighting juice express;
Therewith to bathe thee, O my face, my face!
Till all thy beauty should be bitterness,
And each unloved caress
Burn on the old man's lip, which should embrace
Death on thy rosy portals, O my face!

“But if I knew, O my face, my face!
That thy lips should be kist by whom I would list,
I would glide, unespied, to a place, my face,
Where red roses, I know, ripely ripple and blow,
And white lilies grow more snowy than snow;
And all in the balmy evening light,
While the dew is new, and the stars but a few,
The roses so red, and the lilies so white,
I would pluck, with the sunset upon them, and press
From those flowers their sweetest sweetnesses,
To embalm thee, my face, till what he should embrace
Should be fairer than lilies and richer than roses;
So that when on thy lips my beloved one reposes,
A thousand summers of fragrant sighs
Might fan the faint fire of his soul's desire
With raptures pure as the rivers that rise
Among the valleys of Paradise.”