University of Virginia Library

Blindly, blindly, in the dark
Welters now his spirit's bark,
Who has blotted from his heaven
All the lights to guide him given,
So that now there doth endure
Unto him no good, no pure,
And no virtue seemeth sure;
While the fairest form wherein
Goodness did a body win,
Leprous all have showed with sin;
While the Star which he well nigh
Worshipped, where it shone on high,
Suddenly has left its height,
Treacherous meteor of the night.
Round his path is darkness spread;
But what thicker night is shed
Then, when he is undeceived,
And has all the web unweaved
Of that hateful treachery,
Of that foul and hideous lie;
When the traitor owns his guilt
And his blood is justly spilt—
And a murderer thou dost stand,
With her blood upon thy hand!
Oh! what profits now the force
Of thy measureless remorse?
What thy soul's strong agonies?
What thy tears of blood, thy cries
Underneath the midnight skies?
What a thousand anguished years,
An eternity of tears?
All were profitless to rue
What a single hour could do.
Wilt thou call her from the tomb?
Wilt thou bid her from the gloom
Of that forest, where she lies
Hidden deep from human eyes?

Faithful mother! truest wife!
Hardly she sustains her life
In that wasteful wilderness:
Oh unparalleled distress!
Who that paints it to his thought,
Would not unto tears be brought?
She, a child of Flanders’ Earl,
Lacking what the meanest churl,
Poorest beggar that did wait
At her sire's or husband's gate,
Had not lacked,—of which bereft
She had not the meanest left.
Changed she has her palace dome
For a cave of damp and gloom;
Maidens wait not her about,
But wild beasts go in and out;
And no other music more
Knows she than their sullen roar;
For a soft and downy bed
Sticks are underneath her spread;
She has left her dainty food
For the harsh roots of the wood;
Pearls she has not; in their place
Tears are on her woe-worn face:
Only jewels now she knew
Were the drops of chilly dew,
Hanging on the pointed thorn:
This is now her state forlorn.

While the days are summer-long
Then her pains are not so strong;
While the days are summer-warm,
She may shield her child from harm.
Oh! but when the leaves now sere
Told of pitiless winter near,
How she shuddered then to know
What she soon must undergo!
Ill with her it then did fare,
Then her pains were hard to bear.
She must melt within her mouth
Ice, when she would slake her drouth;
When her hunger would allay,
Must the hard snow scrape away,
Till the roots at length she found,
Buried deep in frozen ground.
How amid the long nights dark,
When the cold was stiff and stark,
When the icy north-wind blew,
Keen sword, piercing through and through,
Searching, as it fiercely drave,
Every corner of the cave,
Oh! how then that mother pressed
Her poor shiverer to her breast.
Though no moisture that could give,
Warmth not any there did live;
And herself forgetting quite,
Wailed for that poor shuddering wight;
Who, beholding her to weep,
And that long low wail to keep,
Wailed and wept himself as well,
Though his grief he could not tell.

Yet amid her keenest ill,
She in God found comfort still;
And when day by day the doe
Through the ice and through the snow
Came—a constant visitant,
To that poor child ministrant,—
Blest assurance, token clear
Of his grace she welcomed here:—
It may be, now thanked Him more
Than she ever thanked before,
Could his wondrous guidance praise,
That had from the world's vain ways,
From its flatteries and its wiles,
From its heart-deluding smiles
Her delivered, and had brought,
By rough paths she had not sought
But which now she could discern,
And their gracious meaning learn—
To this shelter safe, though stern.