ページの画像
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors]

THE VISION

OF

THE MAID OF ORLEANS.

IN the first edition of Joan of Arc this Vision formed the ninth book, allegorical machinery having been introduced throughout the poem as originally written. All that remained of such machinery was expunged in the second edition, and the Vision was then struck out, as no longer according with the general design.

THE VISION

OF

THE MAID OF ORLEANS.

THE FIRST BOOK.

ORLEANS was hush'd in sleep. Stretch'd on her couch
The delegated Maiden lay; with toil
Exhausted, and sore anguish, soon she closed

Her heavy eyelids; not reposing then,

For busy phantasy in other scenes

Awaken'd: whether that superior powers,

By wise permission, prompt the midnight dream,

Instructing best the passive faculty;

Or that the soul, escaped its fleshly clog,

5

Flies free, and soars amid the invisible world, 10

And all things are that seem.

Along a moor,

Barren, and wide, and drear, and desolate,

She roam'd, a wanderer through the cheerless night. Far through the silence of the unbroken plain

14

The bittern's boom was heard; hoarse, heavy, deep,

It made accordant music to the scene.

Black clouds, driven fast before the stormy wind,

Sweptshadowing; through their broken folds the moon
Struggled at times with transitory ray,
And made the moving darkness visible.
And now arrived beside a fenny lake

20

She stands, amid whose stagnate waters, hoarse
The long reeds rustled to the gale of night.
A time-worn bark receives the Maid, impell'd
By powers unseen; then did the moon display 25
Where through the crazy vessel's yawning side
The muddy waters oozed. A Woman guides,
And spreads the sail before the wind, which moan'd
As melancholy mournful to her ear,

30

As ever by a dungeon'd wretch was heard
Howling at evening round his prison towers.
Wan was the pilot's countenance, her eyes
Hollow, and her sunk cheeks were furrow'd deep,
Channell'd by tears; a few grey locks hung down
Beneath her hood: and through the Maiden's veins
Chill crept the blood, when, as the night-breeze pass'd,
Lifting her tatter'd mantle, coil'd around

37

She saw a serpent gnawing at her heart.

The plumeless bats with short shrill note flit by,

And the night-raven's scream came fitfully,

40

Borne on the hollow blast. Eager the Maid

Look'd to the shore, and now upon the bank
Leapt, joyful to escape, yet trembling still
In recollection.

There, a mouldering pile

Stretch'd its wide ruins, o'er the plain below Casting a gloomy shade, save where the moon Shone through its fretted windows: the dark yew,

45

« 前へ次へ »