Madeline :: :: University of Virginia Library

Can such a tale of love
Fail human hearts to move?
Have not the old a tear for Madeline;
For the frail infant riven
From virtue's ancient shrine
And into exile driven?
A wanderer with her shame,
In far-off lands she hides her maiden name!
The young may stray; O break their fall,
Not the weak soul its nursery expel
If it rebel,
But take it back ere lost beyond recal!

VALCLUSA.

The watchful angels crave
That lovely soul to save.

Said Daphne: “Hermes once my love desired:
Nor would my wish deny,—
By nobler love inspired,—
To fetch her to the sky.”
This thought her peace devours;
It wings with sympathy the new-born hours.
Nor vain the web of grace it wove:
She held the thread that turned at ebb of tide
A fate aside,
To drag the drowning from the wreck of love.

CHORUS.

Let drop no word of scorn
On Madeline the forlorn,
But mourn her; yet her name may be divine;
Her sin may be condoned:
There is a Madeline
Among the saints enthroned.
This earthly flower, so fair,
Exhaled a perfume as it rode the air;
In modesty was hung its head.
But one who saw the early bud expand
Put out his hand
And plucked the nestled germ ere it had spread.

VALCLUSA.

Then Daphne's sweet desire
Was flashed on Hermes' lyre,
Whose throb replied: To Madeline's succour hie!
She of celestial race
Who wished for once to die,
As saints have done in grace,
Leaves heaven without a sigh
To bear young Madeline back with her on high.
Rejoicing in her course she chose
The poet's soul for her nativity,
To live and die
Environed by his glory to the close.

She long had pined in vain
To share in woman's pain,
With longings that in virtue only burn;
To taste for once of death,
And share the poet's urn;
And share the withered wreath.
Now, her loved task to keep
A soul pursued in waking and in sleep,
She blushed into the poet's sight,
Born at the moment to the good decreed;
The hour of need;
Cleaving with luminosity the night.