ON A PICTURE OF A VERY YOUNG NUN,
NOT READING A DEVOTIONAL BOOK, AND NOT CONTEMPLATING A CRUCIFIX PLACED BESIDE HER.
So young, too young, consign'd to cloistral shade, Untimely wedded,-wedded, yet a maid; And hast thou left no thought, no wish behind, No sweet employment for the wandering wind. Who would be proud to waft a sigh from thee, Sweeter than aught he steals in Araby? Thou wert immured, poor maiden, as I guess, In the blank childhood of thy simpleness; Too young to doubt, too pure to be ashamed, Thou gavest to God what God had never claim'd, And didst unweeting sign away thine all Of earthly good,—a guiltless prodigal. The large reversion of thine unborn love Was sold to purchase an estate above. Yet by thy hands, upon thy bosom prest, I think, indeed, thou art not quite at rest; That Christ that hangs upon the sculptured cross Is not the Jesus to redeem thy loss;
Nor will that book, whate'er its page contain, Convince thee that the world is false and vain.
E'en now there is a something at thy heart That would be off, but may not, dare not, start; Yes, yes! thy face, thine eyes, thy closed lips, prove
Thou wert intended to be loved and love.
Poor maiden! victim of the vilest craft
At which e'er Moloch grinn'd or Belial laugh'd, May all thy aimless wishes be forgiven! May all thy sighs be register'd in Heaven!
And God his mercy and his love impart
For what thou should'st have been, to what thou art!
OH! why is beauty still a bud, infolding A greater beauty that can never be, Yet always is its faint fair self beholding, In all of fair and good that man may see?
Nay, beauty is with thee the power of life, The germ and sweet idea of thy being; As beauty fashion'd that first maid and wife,
That made primeval man rejoice in seeing.
He dream'd of beauty, and he wish'd to see A form to be the substance of his dream; So want begot a child on vacancy,
And that now is which did before but seem.
Adam did love before he look'd on Eve;
He found himself unblest in Eden's bower. A love there is that does not yet conceive
Its own existence: 'tis a simple power,—
A power that most does recognise its might
In weakness, want, and everlasting yearning; Whose heaven is soaring, seeking, ceaseless flight, Whose hell is thirst and everlasting burning.
For what is hell, but an eternal thirst,
And burning for the bounty once rejected? And what is heaven, but good on earth rehearsed, In the calm centre of the Lord perfected?
Then ask not why is beauty but a bud,
That never more than half itself discloses ; Sweet flower, like thee is every human good, And love divine is seen in unblown roses.
YES, I am old, and older yet must be, Drifting along the everlasting sea;
And yet, through puzzling light and perilous dark, I bear with me, as in a lonely ark, A precious cargo of dear memory;
For, though I never was a citizen, Enroll'd in Faith's municipality,
And ne'er believed the phantom of the fen
To be a tangible reality,
Yet have I loved sweet things, that are not now, In frosty starlight, or the cold moonbeam.
I never thought they were; and therefore now No doubt obscures the memory of my dream. My Fairy Land was never upon earth, Nor in the heaven to which I hoped to go; For it was always by the glimmering hearth, When the last fagot gave its reddest glow, And voice of eld wax'd tremulous and low, And the sole taper's intermittent light, Like a slow-tolling bell, declared good night.
Then could I think of Peri and of Fay, As if their deeds were things of yesterday.
I felt the wee maid in her scarlet hood
Real as the babes that wander'd in the wood, And could as well believe a wolf could talk As that a man beside the babes could stalk, With gloomy thoughts of murder in his brain; And then I thought how long the lovely twain Threaded the paths that wound among the trees, And how at last they sunk upon their knees, And said their little prayers, as prettily
As e'er they said them at their mother's knee, And went to sleep. I deem'd them still asleep Clasp'd in each other's arms, beneath a heap Of fragrant leaves;-so little then knew I Of bare-bone Famine's ghastly misery. Yet I could weep and cry, and sob amain, Because they never were to wake again;
But if 'twas said, "They 'll wake at the last day!' Then all the vision melted quite away;
As from the steel the passing stain of breath,
So quickly parts the fancy from the faith.
And I thought the dear babes in the wood no more true Than Red Riding Hood,―ay, or the grim loup-garou, That the poor little maid for her granny mistook; I knew they were both only tales in a book.
« 前へ次へ » |