Passion-Flowers :: :: University of Virginia Library

Fair saint of passion, placidly reclining,
Thy glowing breast contained in marble death,
While Love's soft planet on thy brow is shining,
A sister heart to thine would lend its breath.

'Tis with a thrill of joy I see beside thee
The form that might not pass the Convent grate,
And gather, that the happiness denied thee
On earth makes blessèd thine immortal state.

Not as Love's votary do I invoke thee,
Nor as the glorious Sybil of despair;
But as the Nun, when deeper voices woke thee
From thy wild fever-dream to toil and prayer.

I question not of thy young days of rapture,
That earliest thrill fond maidens dare not name,
The frantic, wild pursuit, the daring capture,
The bloom that veiled the bitter fruit of shame,

The gentle strife that masked thy gentler yielding,
The magic words at which thy virtue fell,
Thy woman's heart, adoring, blessing, shielding,
Pardoned for loving, that it loved so well;

Delights of Love, transcending human measure,
Too tender, too sublime for human worth;
And then, the weeping o'er thy ruined treasure,
In which thy heart poured all its pulses forth.

This was, and is not—at the altar kneeling,
In the world's widow-weeds, I see thee now;
The bitter glancing of a smile revealing
The anguish of the suicidal vow.

And here begins to mine thy spirit's mission:
How fared it with thee in thy cloister cell?
Did heaven console thee with its dreams Elysian?
Or felt thy plundered heart the flames of hell?

When thy first force of agony went from thee,
And left thee stunned and swooning, faint and dull,
How did thy garb of holiness become thee?
Was it ennobling? was it weariful?

The saints who were thy refuge, grew they vengeful?
Or smiled they mournfully on thy retreat?
Hadst thou repose after a fate so changeful?
Did God's dear love make expiation sweet?

Say, did that soul of temper so elastic,
Like a bent bow, of its own tension break?
Or did the Chaos of thy thoughts grow plastic,
And from the hand divine new moulding take?

For it was long—through many a tedious morrow
Thy wildered mind its task austere pursued,
Scourged on by Conscience, driven back by Sorrow,
A Queen of Phantoms, ruling Solitude.

At length replied to me that wondrous woman,
With the soft starlight flitting o'er her brow:
‘Thou know'st my love and grief were superhuman;
So is my rapture; I possess him now.

What was, I cannot tell—thou know'st our story,
Know'st how we stole God's treasure from on high;
Without heaven's virtue we had heaven's glory;
Too justly our delights were doomed to die.

Intense as were our blisses, ev'n so painful
The keen privation it was ours to share;
All states, all places, barren proved and baneful;
Dead stones grew pitiful at our despair;

‘Till, to the cloister's solitude repairing,
Our feet the way of holier sorrows trod,
Hid from each other, yet together sharing
The labor of the Providence of God.

‘Often at midnight, on the cold stone lying,
My passionate sobs have rent the passive air,
While my crisped fingers clutched the pavement, trying
To hold him fast, as he had still been there.

‘I called, I shrieked, till my spent breath came faintly;
I sank in pain Christ's martyrs could not bear;
Then dreamed I saw him, beautiful and saintly,
As his far Convent tolled the hour of prayer.

‘Solemn and deep that vision of reunion—
He passed in robe, and cowl, and sandalled feet;
But our dissevered lips held no communion;
Our long-divorcèd glances could not meet.

‘Then slowly, from that hunger of sensation,
That rage for happiness, which makes it sin,
I rose to calmer, wider contemplation,
And knew the Holiest and his discipline.

‘Oh thou who call'st on me! if that thou bearest
A wounded heart beneath thy woman's vest,
If thou my mournful earthly fortune sharest,
Share the high hopes that calmed my fevered breast.

‘Not vainly do I boast Religion's power;
Faith dawned upon the eyes with Sorrow dim;
I toiled and trusted, till there came an hour
That saw me sleep in God, and wake with him.

‘Seek comfort thus for all life's painful losing;
Compel from Sorrow merit and reward;
And sometimes wile a mournful hour in musing
How Eloïsa loved her Abelard.’

The voice fled heav'nward ere its spell was broken—
I stretched a tremulous hand within the grate,
And bore away a ravished rose, in token
Of woman's highest love and hardest fate.