II.
“Out of whom He cast seven devils.”
No phantoms thus her soul assailed,
It was no vision of the night,
No dim unreal mist, that veiled
The glad reality of light;
No discord of sweet strings unstrung
A skilful touch might tune again,
No jar of nerves too tightly wrung,
No shadows of an o'erwrought brain;
But din of mocking voices rude,
Spirits whose touches left a stain,
Owning no shrine of solitude
Their blasphemies might not profane:
Real as the earth she, hopeless, trod,
Real as the heaven they had lost,
Real as the soul they kept from God,
From torture still to torture tossed.
Thus sleep to her could bring no calm,
No stillness dwelt for her in night;
And human love could yield no balm,
And home no deep and pure delight;
Till light upon that chaos broke,—
Not from unconscious azure skies,—
The morning that her spirit woke
Beamed from the depths of human eyes.
No thunder, with God's vengeance dread,
Scattered that company of hell;
It was a Voice from which they fled,
A Voice they knew before they fell.
Once more she was alone and free,
And silence all her soul possessed;
As the “great calm” the storm-tossed sea
When the same voice commanded rest.
Such solitude a heaven might make,
Such silence had for bliss sufficed;
What was it, then, from hell to wake,
And wake beneath the smile of Christ!
