Feda with Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Far on the sea-washed border of fair France,
In Southern sunlands, where the fire-flies dance
Through long spring nights till June goes after May,
Between the waters and the hills there lay
A town of cool paved streets and shaded ways,
A pleasant refuge in scorched autumn days,
Girded with gardens, where what warm winds blew
Were sweet with roses all long summer through.

The old walls crumble down, no sentry waits
To cry his challenge in her open gates,—
Her towers have seen no gleam of armoured men
Since Martel drave the flying Saracen;—
But ferns droop down from many clefts and rents,
Long grasses wave in all her battlements,

And only children laughing at their play
Keep siege and battle in the old gate-way.

Yet few things change, the grey walls moulder on,
The hills give back the cloister carillon;
The goat-bells ring from ridge to rocky ridge,
And through the valley by the wattled bridge
In slow procession up the mountain path
The reapers bring their evening aftermath.

One half the crescent of its red-rocked bay
Sloped gently down from where a convent lay,
With many a shrine, among dark olive trees,
And pathway winding to the parted seas.
There oft at eve the fisher-folk would climb,
When suns were setting, and the Ave-chime
Rang welcome home, to where the cypress waves
Above a sleeping sisterhood of graves,
And watch their shadows lengthen out and fall
Across that wonder of the cloister wall,
Where some old Tuscan who had strayed so far
Had drawn their Saint of little Castellar.

Such quiet cares the white-robed sisters had
Who lived forgotten of the world, and glad,—
To trim the lamps before their Lady's feet,
And keep the flowers in her chalice sweet,
Or bind her wreath with gentle willing hands.

And some came thither out of far off lands,
To lose the world a little while, and stayed
And laid their sorrows in that cypress shade;
And some came there to bury deep their dead;
And some to whom life was a book unread,
That in the after-world their lips might kiss
The Master's feet without one taint of this.

The peace of God was on their lives,—no day
Brought any tiding from the world's highway;
Far out to sea they watched the great ships pass;
The first spring violet in the cloister grass
Was such a thing to them, the first lark's song,
Who lived with fisher folk the whole year long.

There came one thither on the tide of time,
Half-child half-woman, when the spring's young prime

Was starriest with narcissus, ere those vales
Grew mad with music of the nightingales,—
Came there, and lingered, till a golden moon
Grew full-orbed in the singing skies of June,
And fire-flies dimmed their lustre in the tree:
Till all the peasant-folk would watch to see
A slight white figure pass, who seemed to wear
The whole sun's glory in her golden hair,
The sea's deep colour in her wide blue eyes,
And loved the greeting of her soft replies,
And all the troubled beauty of her face.

For she had come to that enchanted place
With a child's first great sorrow, having known
One life to love that twined about her own
Far north in their Loire valley,—and he was dead,
And she, with strangers all uncomfortèd,
Stayed in that convent on the Southern shore.

She had the features of one gone before,
He had said, the kind grave man who seldom smiled.
But only loved her, loved her: and the child
Heard in a reverend wonder;—far apart

In the green vineyard country, heart in heart,
They two had lived together all her days;
His love had been her faith, and his least praise
Her earthly gladness; the world's storm and strife
Had come not near the whiteness of her life.
There he, half dreamer half philosopher,
Had bared the treasure of his soul to her,—
Bestowed on all her wonder-time of youth
Whate'er on earth is consecrate to truth,
Through holy thoughts of great lives dead and gone
To heights of hope still waiting to be won,—
Those harvests gathered from the thousand years
In love unrecompensed, in untold tears
By hero teachers of the hero time,
And hero singers of the world's grey prime.

But as days gathered, and the young child grew,
She learned the secret of his heart, and knew
The shadow of a lost gladness darkening still
That wore the little thread of life, until
His thoughts would drift farther and far away,
His eyes would wander strangely,—so one day

They called a frightened child to his bedside,
And he just smiled, and smiling on her died.

Then they had brought her southward; she was grown
Almost a woman, very fair, alone
In a dark shadow that she knew not of,
With those dead years, and nature and her love.
And she had no one in the world—save here
The mother's sister—simple and severe,
The abbess,—one indeed who meant her well,
Only she hoped Féda would learn to dwell
Contented here, when the young dreams were flown,
And never miss a life she had not known.
She little guessed how strange a dwelling place
Had genius chosen in that young child's face
And flowerlike frail form, what wild unrest
Of wonder-dreams, what longings unrepressed
Burned in her, whispered by that voice which stirs
The quick heart-beat of God's own choristers.

Wayward and loveable,—she would not heed
Those books the white-robed sisters bade her read.

She only said—“I pray you bear with me,
“Who was not taught to see as others see;”
Would answer low, with lips put up to kiss,
“Because it was my father taught me this.
“I know he would not tell me wrong,” she said,
“It is so little while since he is dead,—
“And you will leave me free a little yet,
“To dream my dreams, and wander, and forget.”

So first they did not reason with her mood,
And left her free to wander where she would,
Having no fear because of her sweet face,
Among the quiet dwellers of that place.

And all those woods were hers to wander through,
From summer-dawning to the even-dew;
Those hills, where still the orange-gardens told
The old-world fable of the fruit of gold,
And all the loveliness of earth was there:
Such flowers to bind in garlands for her hair,
Such skies to wonder at, such songs to sing,
Such changeful dreams for her imagining.

And so it was Féda was grown to be
Known to all dwellers by that summer sea;
Perchance the shadow of the convent cast
A kind of reverence round her: where she passed
Not one would dare to follow, lest he scare
That gentle presence. And since she came there
Men whispered there had been no blight to spoil
The orange-blossom, but the golden oil
Swelled larger berries on their olive trees,
And stormy nights broke never near those seas.

Only at times the labourer on the hill
In the orange groves when noon lay very still
With drowsy scent of blossom, pausing, heard
A sound that was no song of any bird,
No reed of shepherd piping to his flocks,
A voice that rang through the wave-hollowed rocks
Fresh, ever-changing, rising—falling,
To hear the echo answer back its calling,—
And crossed himself at those sweet carollings,
And told his fellow, “the white lady sings.’

For she would sit and make song after song
In some far olive wood the whole noon long,

Striving to answer in her song the speech
Of birds and waters, if she too might reach
The hidden heart of nature—learn to know
The charm revealed through music long ago
To that old singer of the dawn of days,
Who made such melody in mountain ways
That down the shadowy hollows, stealing, came
The frightened woodland things with eyes aflame,
And listened ever and grew less afraid,
Till on his knees the white doe laid her head,
And stared out sorrow from her brimming eyes;
The lark dropped silent from the songless skies,
And pressed a throbbing bosom on his feet;
The lizard lying in the noonday heat
Looked up to wonder; the loud stream grew still,
And brought no story from the silent hill;
No least wave fretted on the glassy seas,
And all the branches of the windless trees
Were set with little heaving throats of birds,
That sat and wondered why the song had words.

So in her singing she forgot her care,
Till that midsummer noon when Adrien found her there.