Legends of the Morrow :: :: University of Virginia Library

Legends of the Morrow

By Thomas Gordon Hake

Hake, Thomas Gordon (1809-1895)

THE PALMIST.

THE POET'S ALMS-HOUSE.

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THE PALMIST.

I

Through the tired twilight hour strange meanings stole;
The wanton waves their living loads had tossed
From rock to hollow: towards the sandy shoal
The youthful palmist crossed,
While sterner things than thought from Nature's soul
Were voiced abroad and lost.

II

It was the hour when, balanced in the sky,
Three rival orbs of heaven have burning speech,
And paths that in their rare conjunction lie
To mortal vision reach;
It was the hour when Fate's serene reply
Is branded on the beach.

III

There have the ruthless seas heaped up their sheaves,
But o'er the wasted spoil no longer rave,
All solemn as the pile that earth upheaves
At man's remembered grave;
The curious moon, half rising, interweaves
In heaven a blood-red wave.

IV

“Where falls my lot?” the palmist asks: “I tread
These sands and wait on heaven my only guide,
Whose marvels crowd the sky, and, as they spread,
Man's destiny decide.”
The sunset-glow was dreaming of the dead
While watching out the tide.

V

A star, all fire, in the pale sapphire shines;
Soul-mute the seer rests on the trancèd strand—
And strives to spell the ribbed and gilded lines
Scored on the virgin sand,
As one heart-lone the fretted life divines
On some fair maiden's hand.

VI

A maiden's hand! Why turn his troubled eyes?
Amid his toils of thought a shade has stole
O'er those pale sandy wastes, now seems to rise
Now vanish through his soul.
'Tis there; a shadow-hand before him lies,
And lingers on the shoal.

VII

With virgin hand held out 'mid things to be,
A maiden cries, “I saw in dreams a seer
Reading the sands beside an awful sea,
Even as I see thee here.
Where is he?—wherefore came I unto thee?—
He knows why dreams appear.”

VIII

So lovely, and her dream within her still
That o'er her eyes its drowsing beauty shed,
Her ominous words through all his senses thrill;
She seems an angel sped
Not in the wistful service of her will
But by a vision led.

IX

“Wake,” said he, “from the wonders of thy sleep,
And hear the things thy vision doth portend.
Doom breaks upon us in its meanings deep,
While these charmed hours impend:
Across thy palm its pure revealings sweep,
And with our future blend.”

X

Is it herself or heaven the virgin fears?
In vain she looks for guidance in his face.
His eyes are turned from hers, his gaze appears
To burn its way in space—
And, lo! a flash from heaven the warning bears,
Thy perilous steps retrace!

XI

Too late; deep passion smoulders in her eyes,
That drooping yet the more her love reveal:
She asks, why bade he, in his reveries,
This passion to her steal?
The heavens reply; behind the distant skies
The thunder-echoes reel.

XII

But he enrapt seeks not through love or fear
The high forbidden portents to divine—
He takes the virgin's hand, he draws her near,
He threads each burning line.
And through her spotless soul, to heaven still dear,
He reads each thrilling sign.

XIII

Why pales the palmist's cheek? what dreads he now?
His lips, unsealed, the cruel doom betray:
“This breath-dimmed coronet awaits thy brow,
And still the symbols say
That heaven records of thee a broken vow
Given on thy bridal day.”

XIV

She stands woe-stricken, but his eyes can see
Only the rifted future ravening nigh,
His lips can only utter the decree
He wrests from power on high,
Which comes with sudden rush of things to be,
And voiceless shudders by.

XV

“I see o'er all thy youth fierce passion break:
Hearts burn for thee, all riches on thee shower;
I see thy love to endless change awake:
To thee belongs the hour!
Here doth no hand thy triumphs overtake,
No shadow on thee lower.

XVI

“A king at last thy slave, all sway is thine.
As votive stars in sinking still adore,
His eyes, whereon first broke thy love divine,
The wave of night rolls o'er;
In memory's hopeless prison doth he pine
And look on thee no more.

XVII

“Thy arms, soft flowing as the sea at eve,
Wind round all hearts, but, like the coiling wave,
Upon the shoal their fated burden leave,
No hand held up to save;
And now these depths of passion cease to heave,
And flood thy early grave.”

XVIII

“O God, what have I done?” she cries aloud;
“As once, am not I ever safe with Thee?
Shame follows shame as waves each other crowd
Upon the ruthless sea!
Sooner, this beauty to the dust be bowed
And the rocks cover me!”

XIX

But he whose maddened brow above her bends,
Heeds not her cry,—hushed in that mournful roar,
The rushing of the hollow wind that rends
Fate's far-off troubled shore;
Heard only where the soul's procession ends
At death's wide open door.

XX

Roused from a trance of grief, as by a brand
That scores upon her palm all woman's pain,
She shrinks in anguish, and withdraws her hand:
He saw the fiery stain—
And, lo! a shadow from the far-off strand
Points while he reads again.

XXI

“He that reveals thy fate this hour is thine,
But loving till all love shall cease to be,
Beneath thy shadow-hand is left to pine
And look no more on thee—
O God!” he cries, “how awful is Thy Sign!
Her first love falls to me!”