Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

A vision crossed my path in youth,—
A brighter none have seen;
I deem'd not upon earth in sooth
That aught so fair had been.
Whate'er this world had shown to me,
Or Fancy dream'd, as what might be,
Was spiritless and mean,
Contrasted with the rich excess
Of that transcendent loveliness;

And yet full well I knew the form
Which then before me stood,
With human life and love was warm,—
A thing of flesh and blood;
The sister of my bosom friend
She came, awhile the charm to blend
Of loveliest maidenhood,
Beneath her mother's sheltering care,
With college walls so grim and bare.

My poet-pencil may not trace,
With touches weak and faint,
The glory of that angel face
Too fair for words to paint:

393

An emanation she might seem
Of some intense, seraphic dream
By bard or prophet saint
Conceived: and such an one I ween
The author of her birth had been.

And fresh from mountain-rock and rill,
Broad lake and heathery glen,
And free discourse with thoughts that fill
The master minds of men,
Among our cloister'd courts she came,—
In mind, in person and in name,
A light to cheer the den
Of murky, scientific thought,
With rays from God and Nature caught.

Through many a verdant garden walk
And pillar'd, dim arcade,
I led, in free, permitted talk,
That glorious mountain maid;
And, looking back, it seems to me,
That, had I then been fancy-free,
I scarce had been afraid
To cast before her feet my whole
Of mind and heart, of sense and soul.

But now, when thirty years are o'er,
With full assent I see
That Heaven had better things in store
Alike for her and me.
Apart our several journeys lay,
And when five years had passed away
The thing which was to be
Had been;—we met within that span,—
The bride betrothed, the married man.

394

The full effulgence of her bloom
Was then indeed gone by,
And days of anxious care and gloom
Had dimm'd her cheek and eye;
Yet still my reverent gaze could trace
The perfect outline of her face,
The feeling deep and high,
The beaming thought, the brow's expanse,
The pure angelic countenance.

They met, conversed (my wife and she)
With frank and cordial speech,
And I, methought, began to see
That each grew dear to each:
But brief the intercourse allowed,
And soon alas! life's crush and crowd
Had borne, beyond our reach,
Her who perchance had, nothing loth,
Been else the cherish'd friend of both.

Nine years roll'd by,—we met again,
Almost at noon of life;
Well wore she then her wedlock's chain,
A mother and a wife:
Her husband, one, for many a year,
My school and college friend sincere,
In keen forensic strife
By this engaged,—yet leaning more
To letter'd than to legal lore.

She had not changed her maiden name
By sharing his;—beneath
Their friendly roof I went and came,
On Hampstead's breezy heath.
With them the aunt and mother dwelt,
Between their knees two children knelt,
And twice from out its sheath
The sword of Death, in fell despite,
Had leapt, their outward bliss to smite.

395

Years swiftly came,—as swiftly fled,—
Beneath the churchyard stone
The husband slumber'd with the dead,
The wife lived on alone:
A patient servant of the cross
She meekly bore and felt her loss,
Till grief had older grown;
And then to studious toil resign'd
Her energies of heart and mind.

No mine of new or ancient thought
From her withheld its ore;
By Grecian wisdom she was taught,
And skill'd in German lore.
Of every clime, of every age,
Of theologian, saint and sage
All depths did she explore;
While o'er all other minds was thrown
The native lustre of her own.

Almost with every various power
Her genius seem'd endued;
On fancy's wing from flower to flower
Now flutter'd, light of mood,—
Now, to sublime exertion wrought,
In agony of wrestling thought
Its painful way pursued
Through metaphysic mazes dim,—
Now track'd the flight of seraphim.

But most to one absorbing aim
She bent her steadfast will,—
To vindicate her Father's name
Through good report and ill;
From stigma cast by slanderous foe,
From open or insidious blow,
Renew'd, repeated still,
To place his mighty memory clear
Was what on earth she held most dear.

396

Thus pass'd her period of decline
In pious toil away,
While still her beauty more divine
Appear'd in its decay;
Though cheek and eye less lust'rous grew,
And those rich locks of loveliest hue
Were slightly tinged with grey,
In eyes that on her aspect gazed
Like mine, celestial glory blazed.

Such looks seraphic as the art
Of Guido loved to trace,—
Such as his pencil could impart
To Cenci's angel face,—
Seem'd to proclaim to heart and eye
That her transition now was nigh
To that congenial place,
To which, as to their proper home,
Earth's purest make such haste to come.

Yet not without some natural pain
Can souls of heavenly birth
Break the last link of that strong chain
Which binds them down to earth:
And we, of less ethereal mould,
Feel not the fibres manifold
Which knit, in grief or mirth,
The mind of more exalted powers
To this entangling world of ours.

The flush of philosophic thought—
The joy of knowledge won—
The freights by wandering fancy brought
From worlds beyond the sun—
The inward eye no longer blind—
The converse high of mind with mind—
The race so bravely run
By kindred soul with kindred soul—
Yet unattain'd the glorious goal;—

397

A startling and a fearful change,—
Ere life hath reach'd its eve,
For worlds unknown, obscure and strange,
Such living work to leave.
Repose mysterious, dark and dread,
To sleep among the unconscious dead:—
And well may we believe
That ghastly must have seem'd to her
The darkness of the sepulchre.

Yet, gazing on that prospect drear,
No jot did she abate
Of labour which she held so dear,
But early still and late
Her task of filial love pursued,
And oft cast down, but ne'er subdued,
Did patiently await
The summons, which she knew must come
Full soon, to her eternal home.

And when at last her parting hour
She surely felt was nigh,
Alone she met the grisly power,
And veil'd her face to die.
No sympathizing voice or look
Of friends or kindred would she brook,
But hid from human eye
The agony of that last strife
Through which she wrestled into life.

No vestige, when the breath had fled,
Of all that beauty rare,
They say remain'd upon the dead
Once more than earthly fair.
The traits, so potent to express
The spirit's inward loveliness,
Of that despoil'd and bare,
Were left in deepen'd lines at length,
Stern types of intellectual strength.

398

So best decreed;—had all been spared
Of feature and of form,
It seems as if we scarce had dared
To give it to the worm.
But now her soul's deserted shell
Served by its utter wreck to tell
How fierce had been the storm
Of pain and grief, through which she pass'd
Victorious into life at last.

Of her, now sleeping in the grave,
The gifted and the graced,—
Some relics still—the books she gave—
The words her fingers traced—
Her letters, long preserved with care—
A ringlet of her youthful hair—
And, ne'er to be effaced,—
Her image in my memory's shrine—
Must still, while life remains, be mine.

Her resting-place is green and fair
On Highgate's gentle steep;
Her father, mother, husband there
In peace beside her sleep:
In Grasmere is her brother's grave,
Where o'er the chords of wood and wave
The mountain breezes sweep;
Fit requiem for the poets twain
There, side by side, at rest from pain.

High privilege, to one like me,
Such mortals to have known;
'Tis easier, when their graves I see,
To think upon my own.
O! when beyond life's middle stage
Extends our earthly pilgrimage,—
Like grass untimely mown,
The great, the good, who made it sweet,
Lie stretch'd in heaps beneath our feet.

399

One yet remains—a brother mind
In genius as in birth,
By those beloved ones left behind,
To mourn their loss on earth:—
Yet scarce to mourn:—why squander tears
On those, to whom a few short years,
Soon spent, and little worth,
Shall bring us, like themselves set free
From all that dimm'd humanity?