How softly have my limbs reposed!Nor stormy sea, nor haunted land,Nor sorcerer’s unhallowed wand,Disturbed the opiate shades that closedThe sleepy avenues of sense;And therefore I, without pretenceOf weariness or dream-wrought gloom,My tale of yester-eve resume.Together o’er the mystic IsleWe wandered many a sinuous mile.’Twas midway in the month of June,And rivulets with lisping rune,And bowering trees of tender green,And flowering shrubs their trunks betweenEnticed our steps till gloaming grayUpon the pathless forest lay.Think not I journeyed void of fear;Sir Roberval’s hot maledictionLike hurtling thunder sounded near;Our steps the envious demons haunted,And peeped, or seemed to peep and leer,From rocky clefts and caverns drear.But still defiantly, undaunted,Eugene averred it had been heldBy wise philosophers of eldThat all such sights and sounds are mereFantastic tricks of eye and ear,And only meet for tales of fiction.“Heed not,” he said, “the vicious threat,’Twas but a ruffian’s empty talk,The which I pray thou may’st forgetAnd half his evil purpose baulk.”A silent doubt and grateful kissWas all I could oppose to this.But firmer grew my steps. The airWas laden with delicious balm;Rich exhalations everywhere,From pine and spruce and cedar grove,And over all a dreamy calm,An affluence of brooding love,A palpable, beneficentSufficiency of blest content.Amid the hours, in restful pauseWe loitered on the moss-clad rocks,And listened to the sober cawsOf lonely rooks, and watched thick flocksOf pigeons passing overhead;Or where the scarlet grosbeak sped,A wingéd fire, through clumps of pineSent chasing looks of joy and wonder.Blue violets and celandine,And modest ferns that glanced from underGray-hooded boulders, seemed to say—“O, tarry, gentle folk; O, stay,For we are lonely in this wood,And sigh for human sympathyTo cheer our days of solitude.”Meek forest flowers, how dear to me!I loved them, kissed them on the stem,And felt that I must ever beSecluded from the world like them.The long-drawn shadows, eastward cast,Admonished us that day was fastDissolving, and would soon be past;And we must needs regain the spotWhere waited good Nanette our coming.The chattering squirrel we heeded not,Nor paused to list the partridge drumming.The wedded bird was in her nest,And knew from the suspended song(A tribute to her listening ear)That from the green boughs rustling nearHad trilled and warbled all day long,A brief space only must she waitThe fondling of her chirping mate.With some wise meaning, wise and deepThat from her eyes was fain to peep,And wealth of words and lifted handsOur thoughtful servitor, Nanette,Gave kindly greeting ere we met.“Come, children, follow me,” she said,And silently the way she ledAn arpent from the ocean sands,Directly to a piny grove,Where she with wondrous skill had woveA double bower of evergreen,Meet for a fairy king and queen.—“There, tell your rosaries and takeA sabbath slumber; till you wake,Nanette, hard by, will watchful stand,With loaded arquebuse in hand,Your trusty sentinel, for hereSome prowling beast may chance appearOn no good neighbour’s lawful quest;To-morrow I can doze and rest.”—Thus, voluble, my faithful Nurse.Amazed, I stood and could not speak,But kissed her on the brow and cheek,And wept to think my Uncle’s curseShould fall on her, so worn and bent,So moved with every good intent.A flushing joy it was to seeThat double-chambered arbour fair,Re-calling to my memoryThe storied lore of things that wereMy childhood’s moonlit witchery.Next morn we sought the circling strandAnd question made of wind and seaIf such a thing might ever be,That, soon or late, from any landSome friendly sail would come that wayAnd waft us thence: in vain, in vain!The hollow wind had nought to say,But, like a troubled ghost, passed by;—The waste illimitable mainAnd awful silence of the skyVouchsafed no sign, made no reply.—Oft times upon some lifted rockThat overhung the waves, we sateAnd listened to the undershockWhose sad persistency, like fate,Made land and sea more desolate.Again in lighter mood we trodThe yellow sands and pale-green sodStrewn with innumerable shells,In whose pink whorls and breathing cellsBeauty and wonder slept enshrined,Like holy thoughts in a dreamer’s mind.Of these sea-waifs an ample storeWe gathered, and at twilight boreThe treasure to our sylvan home.Once more the star encumbered domeOf heaven its thrilling story told,And Dian, lovely as of old,Poured lavishly her pallid sheenUpon that tranquil world of green;Whose cool and dewy depths, now rifeWith luminous and noiseless life,Responded wide; the fire-fly raceIn myriads lit their tiny lamps;As an army’s countless campsThe warder in some woody placeAt nightfall on his watch may trace;So gleamed and flashed those mimic lamps.The third day came. From shore to shore,Adventurous ever more and more,Our penal Isle we wandered o’er.—Which way our roving fancy led,A wilding beauty largely spreadRewarded our ambitious feet,And made our banishment too sweetFor further censure or repining.Now culling flowers of dainty dyes,Now chasing gaudy butterflies,And now on herbaged slopes reclining,Where purple blooms of lilac trees,And sultry hum of hermit beesDisarmed the hours of weariness.—Nor can you fail, dear friends, to guessThat time for dalliance we found,—And if we loved to an excessIn many a long involved caress,O think how we were cribbed and bound.—Lush nature and necessity,As witnessed by the Saints above,In one delicious circle woveThe pulsings of our destiny.The great rude world was far away,And like a troubled vision layOutside our thoughts; its cold deceits,The babble of its noisy streets,And all the selfish rivalryThat courts and castles propagateWere alien to our new estate.—A fragment of propitious sky,Whereon a puff of cloud might lie,Through verdured boughs o’er-arching seen,And glimpses of the sea betweenFar stretches of majestic trees,Such peaceful sanctities as theseWere our abiding joyance now.Cheerily and with lifted browEugene led on, where tamaracs grew,And where tall elms their shadows threwAthwart a little glen whereinA virgin brook seemed glad to winThe pressure of our thirsty lips.Pleasant it was to linger thereAnd cool our fevered finger-tipsIn that pellucid stream and shareThe solace of the ocean breeze.For summer heats were now aglow,The fox sat down and took his ease,The hare moved purposeless and slow;But louder rang the blue jay’s scream,The woodpeck tapped the naked tree,Nor ceased the simple chickadeeTo twitter in the noonday beam.—My lover, wheresoe’er we strayed,Made search in every charmed nook,And angled in the winding brookFor all sweet flowers that love the shadeTo twine for me a bridal braid.Pale yellow lilies, nursed by rocksRifted and scarred by lightning shocks,Or earthquake; river buds and pinks,And modest snow-drops, pearly white,And lilies of the vale uniteTheir beauty in close-loving linksAround a scented woodbine fairTo coronate my dark brown hair.The fragile fern and clover sweetOn that enchanted circlet meet;Young roses lent their blushing hues,Nor could the cedar leaf refuseWith helmet flowers to intertwineIts glossy amplitude divine.—Emerging from that solemn wood,High on a rocky cliff we stoodAt set of sun; far, far awayThe splendors of departing dayUpon the barren ocean lay.—There on that lone sea-beaten height,Investured in a golden light,Eugene, with looks half sad, whole sweet,Upon my brow the garland set,At once a chaplet and aigrette,And said: “Be crowned, my Marguerite!My own true soul, my ever dearCompanion in this wilderness.Though hopeful still, I sometimes fearThat days of darkness and distressMay come to thee when woods are sere,—When it may baffle all my skillTo guard thee from white winter’s chill;—But hence all raven-thoughts of ill,Let me believe that Nature willRelax her rigour, having caughtThe soft infection of those eyesIn whose blue depths my image lies,Even as my soul, with love distraught,Like a lone star drowned in the sea,Is wholly drowned and lost in thee.—Love is our own essential being,Sole sovereign over utmost fate,Its own sufficient laws decreeing,Immortal and immaculate;And when this mild ethereal flameTo mortal man was kindly given’Twas surely meant by highest HeavenThat never aught of evil nameShould dare attempt to thwart its power.—Then let us, dearest, from this hourDefy the future, and pursueThe unimagined pleasure dueTo such surpassing love as ours.One moment in thy folding armsAlone in these sequestered bowers;One throb of thy impassioned heart,Now speaking audibly to mine,And saying, ‘It were death to part;’One honey-dew caress of thine,Out-sums a million rude alarms,Out-lives whole centuries that weighOn loveless souls, on sordid clay,That gravitate to ways of shame,And know love’s magic but by name.—These roseate skies will change their hue;This pomp of leaves when autumn lowersThe windy ways of earth will strew;This aromatic crown of flowers,Made sacred now since worn by you,To-morrow will begin to fade.—But love, sweet spirit, linked as ours,By sad vicissitude o’erlaid,Endures, unchanged by any breathOf adverse fate, and surely willLife’s last inevitable chillSurvive, and triumph over death.”—Thus, eloquent, the radiant youth,Like one inspired with sacred truth,Fair as Adonis, o’er me breathedThe incense of pure love, and wreathedMy heart in dewy dreams of bliss.Consenting Nature, pleased the while,Bestowed upon her outcast IsleThe magic of a mother’s smile.Spent Sol impressed his warmest kissOn ocean’s brow; the wanton windWent sighing up and down to findMeet objects for his soft embraceAll things to amity inclined;Fierce bird and beast forebore to chaseTheir feeble prey, as if they feltLove’s universal breathings meltTheir savage instincts; everywhere,Like mute enchantment in the air,This subtle permeating powerReigned sole. O, blest ambrosial hour!O, halcyon days that followed after,With music from my lute, and laughter,And song and jest, and such full measureOf secret love’s exhaustless treasureAs gave to pain the wings of pleasure!—So fled our summer dream, as fliesAn angel through cerulean skiesOn some good errand swiftly bent,So brief its stay that ere we wist,Gruff Autumn, garmented in mist.His courier winds before him sent,The which, equipped with sleet and hail,Beat down as with an iron flailThe grandeur of the woods, and leftTheir naked solitudes bereftOf bird and flower. The trees stood starkAnd desolate against the darkChaotic sky. The mighty seaIts billows hurled upon the shoreAs if resolved to over-pourAnd gulph our prison-house. Ah, me!All roofless now, save here and thereA tall pine stretched its spear-shaped headAloft into the gelid air;The hemlock, too, its beauty spread,A tent-like pyramid of green,Symbols of hope amid a sceneWhere hope grew pale at winter’s tread.No more, along the sounding shore,In hushed voluptuous dells, no more,Nor on the perilous rock which gaveRude welcome to the climbing wave,Might we, in amplitude of joy,Our paradisal hours employ,—From green to gray, from gray to white,So rapidly the change came on,It seemed but the work of a single nightAnd all our faery world was gone.—Down came the snow, compact, hard-drivenBy all the scourging blasts of heaven,Until, like clouds, dethroned and hurledTumultuous to this nether world,Around the desert isle it lay,A rampart to the ocean’s spray.Half hid where friendly pine trees spreadPerpetual shelter overhead,Hugging a hillside lifted highBetwixt us and the arctic sky,Our cabin stood; a poor defenceAgainst the mute omnipotenceOf searching and insidious frost,Which, like a ghoul condemned and lost,The closeness of an inmate claimed;—But on the rustic hearthstone flamedDry wood and pine-knots resinous:A ready and abundant hoardWhen days were long our hands had storedAgainst the season perilous;And good Nanette, ’twas her desireTo feed the bickering tongues of fireThat warned the dumb intruder hence.When night fell thick, I loved to sitAnd watch the fire-gleams fall and flitOn wooden walls and birch-bark ceiling,Among the densest shadows stealing,Till these, in folds and festoons golden,Like tapestry of castles olden,Shifted and fluttered free, revealingTo fancy’s charmed and wiser visionSuch fabrics as in looms elysianThe angels weave; and thus our hutA palace seemed; and was it notMore beautiful, illumed the whileBy dear Eugene’s adoring smile,Than many a royal chamber where,Concealed amid the gloss and glare,A thousand hateful evils are?—Such fare as woodland wilds afford,Supplied our ever-cheerful board;Nor such alone; the salt sea waveIts tributary largess gave,All that our lenten wants might crave.Slow crept the whitened months, so slow—I sometimes felt I never moreShould see the pretty roses blow,Or tread on aught but endless snow,And listen to the nightly roarOf tempest and the ocean flow.Weird voices, woven with the wind,Riding on darkness often cameAnd syllabled the buried nameOf Roberval, which, like a hearse,Bore inward to my palsied mindThe ghost of his inhuman curse.Was it sick fancy, sore misled,That to my shuddering spirit said?—“Those sounds that shake the midnight air,Are threats of Shapes that will not spareYour trespass on their fief accurst.”“Hush, hush, my love,” Eugene would say,“That cry which o’er our cabin burst,Came from the owls, perched royallyAmong the pine-tops; you but heardThe language of some beast or bird;The mooing of a mother bear,An hungered in her frozen lair;The laugh and mooing of the loonThat welcometh the rising moon.The howling of the wolves you hear,In chase of some unhappy deer,Impeded in its desperate flightBy deep and thickly crusted snows,O’er which its lighter-footed foesPursue like shadows of the night.That lengthened groan, that fearful shriekWas but the grinding stress and creakOf aged trees; they seem to feelThe wrench of storms, and make appealFor mercy; in their ducts and cellsThe sap, which is their life-blood, swellsWhen frosts prevail and bursts asunderWith sharp report its prison walls;Then cease, beloved, to fear and wonderFor all these harmless peals and calls.In sweet assurance rest, love, restThy head on this devoted breast,And dream sweet dreams; the gentle springWill come anon, and birds will singAs sweetly as they sang last year;And shall I not be ever nearTo share with thee the murmuringOf waking life? the humble beeWill drone again as blissfullyAs when from flower to flower he wentAnd to the choral symphonyHis basso horn serenely lent.”—My fears were laid; I ceased to think;Athirst and eager still to drinkThe nectar of his speech.How oft,If he but chanced to hear me sighWhen wild winds blew, or when the softAnd flaky harvest of the skyDescended silent, he would sitUnder that snow-thatched roof and tellSuch marvellous tales of mirth and wit,They held me like a wizard’s spell.Or else some poet’s plaintive verseThat breathed soft vows of youth and maiden,With love-begotten sorrow laden,In twilight tones he would rehearse;And whilst the rhythmic measure flowedFrom those attuned lips, my breastWith trepidation heaved and glowed,For in such guise was well expressedThe master-passion’s undertone,Or happy or disconsolate,Of many a lover’s wayward fateThat bore some semblance to our own.’Twere over-much to pause and tellHow slid the weeks, and all befellEre we could to the heavens say,“The terror of your rage is past,The gnawing frost, the biting blast,And life is in the matin ray.”—The swallow came, the heron’s screamAthwart the marsh-lands, through the woods,Sped resonant; I ceased to dreamOf demons, and my waking moodsThe radiance of the morning took.Upon the bare brown leaves I stood,And saw and heard with raptured lookThe gleam and murmur of the brook,Which we in summer’s plenitudeHad traced to many an arbored nook.’Twas midmost in the budding May,Whilst on my couch of cedar boughs,Perturbed with nameless fears I lay,And breathed to Heaven my silent vows,—A cloud-like cope of purple hueDescended o’er me, hid me quite,And seemed a soft wind round it blew,And from the mystic wind a voiceSpoke low: “Poor child of darkened light!The pure of heart are Heaven’s choice;The Virgin who hath seen thy tears,In pity for thy tender years,Will aid thee in thine utmost plight.”A hallowed tremor o’er me crept,And in that purple cloud I sleptEnshrined, how long I never knew;—And through my dreams the soft wind blewLike music heard at dusk or dawn,And when I woke and found it gone,In fullness of great joy I wept.’Twas thus a new revealment came,A something out of nothingness,To which we gave the simple nameOf Lua. O, the first caressA mother to her first-born gives!—Methinks the angels must confess,Through all the after ages’ lives,An influence so pure and holy,That human hearts, the proud and lowly,Are touched thereby. I kissed, and kissedMy pretty babe, and through the mistOf happy tears upon it gazedIn silent thankfulness, and praisedThe Empress of the skies, whose graceHad glorified that humble place.The sandy marge again we trodRound the green Isle, and felt that GodWas very near,—in ocean’s roar,And in the zephyr’s scented breath,In summer green, in winter hoar,In joy, in grief, in life, in death,Our Friend and Father evermore.Again across the naked sea,—In tumult or in blank repose,At morn and noon, and evening close,—Sick yearnings from our souls were sent.But bootless still the hungry sigh,A southward sail still southward went,If any such we might descry,—As twice or thrice it chanced to be,We saw or fancied shimmering,Like a white eagle’s outstretched wing,Hiding the strait and dubious spaceThat separates the lifted faceOf ocean from the stooping sky.The sail would melt, the hollow domeAbove us and our prison home,And girdling waves, and sobbing rain,And winds full-fledged,—all things that wereOf earth and sky, of sea and air,Strangled sweet Hope, and in the pitOf outer darkness buried it.Yet seemed it sinful to complain,When to our feast of love was givenThe fairest fruit that gracious HeavenHad e’er for human joyance shed.Sweet Innocence! the small hands spread,Dimpled and white, catching at thingsViewless to us, but clearly seenBy those wide-open eyes; the wingsOf heavenly guests it must have beenFluttering near the sinless child,Azure and golden, till she smiledAnd shrank from their excessive sheen.Again the forest’s green arcadesGladly we paced; their sun-lit shadesInvestured us; the laughing brookThat solaced us the year before,Mirrored again my lingering look;In that clear glass I could not failTo see my face grown somewhat pale,But not less fair; we trod once moreThe lofty cliff whereon EugeneHad crowned me his bride and queen.Pleasant those summer days to walkWhere no intrusive step could baulkOur happiness; no tongue to dareWhisper disparagement, and bareThe mysteries of Love’s free-will,Approved of Heaven to strive for still,The liberty that angels share.—Another summer’s beauty dead,Another winter’s cerements woundOn tree and shrub; the sheeted ground,The cruel storm-land overhead,The scream of frightened birds, the windThat in its teeth the tree-tops tookAnd worried all day long and shook,These and the monstrous ocean blindWith foamy wrath, were ours once more;—Once more within our cabin mewedUnder the pine-tops, crisp and hoar,My fears their old alarms pursued.Four times the moon had waxed and wanedSince summer blooms, so bright and brief,Were mourned for by the falling leaf,And winter winds were all unchained,When came the direful, fatal day.The Spectre of the wide world cameIn league with winter’s fierce array,In league with fiends that hissed the nameOf Death around the ruined Isle.Deep lay the snow, pile heaped on pile,When food fell scant, and on a morn,Ere yet the infant light was born,Eager-thus always to provide,Eugene forsook my drowsy side,And lavished on my happy lipsHis silent love; then gently slips,Upon the little callow heapThat lay embalmed in downy sleepHis softest kisses: happy child!She made a little stir and smiled,As if in soothest dreams she knewWhence came that quiet fond adieu.Then pausing at the windy door,His arquebuse on shoulder laid,And in his belt a shining blade,His brow a troubled shadow wore;—Or was it but my own blurred thoughtA semblance of foreboding wrought?Backward he moved, a tardy pace,And toward me turned his comely faceAnd said: “Dear love, I thought to goEre thou shouldst wake, for well I knowThese frequent partings, though but brief,Aye touch thy tender heart with grief.”“Loud blows the nor-wind,” I replied.“Surely thou needst not haste awayBefore the leaden eyes of DayOn our small world are opened wide;For all these partings, my Eugene,Are bitter drops that fall betweenOur honied draughts of happiness;Ah! well I know what dangerous toil,What weary hours companionless,Are thine in quest of needful spoil,Be-wrenched, from stubborn wood and wave,Wherein—Oh God!—an early graveMay compass thee; and I remainA wretched mourner, doomed to bearThe burning curse and bitter baneBequeathed me by Sir Roberval;—O stay, Eugene, stay yet awhile!Just now I dreamt I saw thee borneBy Shapes unshapely, stark and shorn,Three times around the darkened Isle;Then did the heavens o’er thee bend,And in a cloud thou didst ascend,Lost to the world and me forever.”“Twas but a dream,” he said, “no more,”But saying which, a painful quiverHis lips betrayed, then cheerily boreHis manly head, and thus made end.“No evil can such dreams portend:—Nor need I, dearest, say farewell;For love and faith cannot deceive,And hence I cannot but believe,What holy whispers round me tell,That though thou tarriest here behind,Thy spirit journeyeth with me,Clasping me round whereso I be,A shelter from the bruising wind,A covert from the drenching sea.Then rest, my own brave Marguerite,Rest thee in trust; ’tis meet that IThe savage elements defyFor thy loved sake, and for the sweet,Sweet sake of her who slumbers there,Pillowed upon her golden hair,Her beauty, love, so like thine own;—Sweet babe! dear wife!” Ere I could speakHe kissed the tear-drop from my cheek,And ere I wist I was alone,The door stood wide, and he had passedInto the dusky void, and vastUncertainties concealed by Fate.Ah, me! I could but watch and waitFor his return. For his return?I felt my heart within me burn,Then sicken to an icy dread,For seemed a sad voice near me said,“Thou ne’er shall see his face again!”The paragon of noblest men!It could not be; I would not ownA prophecy that turned to stoneAll joys that I had ever known.The wind increased, the day wore on,And ere the hour was half-way goneThat follows noon, a storm of snowBlinded the heavens, and denser grew,And fiercer still the fierce wind blewAs night approached, a night of woe,Such as no fiend might add thereto.The double darkness walled us in,The blackness of the storm and night,And still he came not! O, what sin,What blasphemy against the lightOf Heaven had my soul committed?Never before had eventideOnce found him absent from my side.Eugene came not! deceived, outwitted,Sore tempest-tossed and lured astray.By demons, when the night-owl flittedAcross his face at close of day,Groping for home, exhausted, faint,No angel near, no pitying saintTo aid his steps and point the way.From ebb of day till noon of night,And onward till return of light,The signal horn, Nanette and I,Alternate blew, but for replyThe wind’s unprecedented roar,And ocean thundering round the shoreOur labor mocked; and other sounds,Nor of the land, nor sea, nor sky,Our ears profaned; the unleashed houndsOf spleenful hell were all abroad,And round our snow-bound cabin trod,And stormed on clashing wings aloof,And stamped upon the yielding roof,And all our lamentation jeered.Down the wide chimney-gorge they peeredWith great green eye-balls fringed with flame;—The holy cross I kissed and reared,And in sweet Mary’s blessed name,Who erst had buoyed my sinking heart,Conjured the foul-faced fiends depart.Their shriekings made a storm more loudThan that before whose fury bowedThe hundred-ringéd oaken trees;More fearful, more appalling theseThan thunder from the thunder-cloud;But trembling at the sacred sign,And mention of the Name divine,They dared not, could not disobey,But fled in baffled rage away.—The morrow came, and still the morrow,But neither time, nor pain, nor sorrow,Nor any evil thing could makeMy stricken soul advisement takeOf aught that in the world of senseThe fiat of OmnipotenceMight choose prescribe; I only knowThat fever came, whose fiery flowSurged through the temple-gates of thought,Till merciful delirium wroughtRelease from knowledge, from a worldWhere Death’s black banner stood unfurled.—Restored—condemned—to conscious life,The parting hour, the storm, the strife,Rose from their tombs and dimly passed,But on my spirit only castA feeble shade. When known the worst,When every joy that love has nursedLies cold and dead, a sullen calmSheds on the bleeding heart a balmThat is not peace, and does not heal,But makes it half content to feelThe frost upon the withered leaf,To see love’s lifeboat rock and reelAnd founder on the stormy reef.A languid stupor, chill and gray,Upon my listless being lay—I knew and felt Eugene was not;—I saw that in the osier cot,Constructed by his cunning skill,My babe lay sleeping, very still:So very still and pale was she,That when I questioned, quietly,How long since she had fallen asleep,Nanette could only moan and weep,And rock her body to and fro.—With cautious step, and stooping low,I took the little dimpled handIn mine, and felt the waxen brow.O, Queen of Heaven! clearly now,’Twas given me to understandThat all the warmth of life had fled;My babe, my pretty babe, was dead!—In stupefaction fixed I stoodSmitten afresh; a wailing cry,The wounded love of motherhood,Rose from my heart; mine eyes were dryDenied the blessed drops that giveA little ease, that we may live—Live on, to feel with every breathThat life is but the mask of death.Regardful of my frozen gaze,Hard set upon the frozen face,Nanette, at length, in halting phrase,Her painful pass essayed to trace:Told how, when hot the fever ranAlong my veins, and when the wanAnd wasted moonshine fringed the hearth,And voices that were not of earthCame through the gloom, the famished child,With pouting lips and eyelids mild,Her wonted nourishment did crave;And how, O God forgive! she gaveThe little mouth its wish. She toldHow dismal were the nights and cold,Her haunted hours of rest how few,And how my precious darling drewFrom the distempered fevered fountThe malady that raged in me.How long it was, the tangled count,One week or two, or maybe three—Her head astray, she could not tell,When rang, she said, a silvery bell,A-tolling softly far away.So softly tolling, faint and far,When quiet as the morning star,That cannot brook the glare of day,And seeks the upper azure deep,My Lua (pardon if I weep),Pure nestling of this sinful breast,Had struggled into gracious rest.Unhappy nurse! that hallowed knellWhich on her pious fancy fellThrough midnight dreams was solace meetFor one whose slow, uncertain feetTheir journey’s end had well-nigh gained;Whose meagre face drooped, pinched and pained,From ague-fits that lately shookAll gladness from its kindly look.No longer in those furrows playedThe gleams of mirth that erst had madeHer gossip by the cabin fire,A pleasing hum; for she had storeOf gruesome tales and faery lore,Which suited with the elfin quireOf winds that on the waste of night.Their voices spent; ’twas her delight,In calmer hours, her voice to strainWith lays of roving TroubadourThat from her girlhood’s bloom had lainMid memory’s tuneful cords secure.How changed she was! soon, soon I feltMy pity for her dolour melt.My friend and sole companion now,—I brushed the gray hairs from her browAnd kissed it; then came back to meThe days when on that palsied kneeI perched, a happy child; where lateMy babe, my second self had sate:—Strange orbiting of time and fate.Hid in the upheaved scarp of rockThat screened our hut from winter’s shockA cave there was of spacious bound,Wherein no wave of human soundHad ever rolled; imprisoned there,Like a grey penitent at prayer,Hoar Silence wept, and from the tearsEmbroidered hangings, fold on fold,And silver tassels tinct with goldThe fingering of the voiceless yearsHad deftly wrought, and on the wallsIn sumptuous breadth of foamy fallsThe product of their genius hung.From floor to ceiling, arched and high—A counterfeited cloudy sky,—Smooth alabaster pillars sprung.On either side might one espyWhat seemed hushed oratories rareInviting sinful knees to prayer.Into that chapel-like retreat,Untrod before by human feet,The wicker cot, wherein still layMy Lua’s uncorrupted clayWe bore, and in an alcove’s shadeOur tear-dewed burthen softly laid.Long muffled in my heavy woe,I knelt beside the little bedAnd many a tearful Ave said.At length, at length, I rose to go,But kneeling still, my poor Nanette,Her crucifix and beads of jetClasped in her praying hands, stirred not,Nor spoke;—our flickering lampThrough the sepulchral gloom and dampMade sickly twilight round the cot.Orbed in her upturned hollow eyesTwo tear-drops gleamed. I said, “Arise!Come, come away. Good sister, come!”Still motionless as death and dumb,—I shook her gently, spoke again,When sudden horror and affrightLaid hold upon my reeling brain;Her soul, unshrived, had winged its flight!—I sank upon the clammy stone,The lamp died out and all was night.“Mother of God! alone! alone!”I cried in agonized despair,“O pity me! O Mary spare!A mother’s anguish hast thou known,O pity me! alone! alone!”A thousand startled echoes sprangForth from their stony crypts, and rangA ghostly miserere roundThe cavern’s dread Cimmerian bound,Till sinking to a dying moanThey answered back, “alone! alone!”“Nay, not alone, poor Marguerite!”I heard a voice divinely sweet,And in a moment’s awful spaceThat silent subterranean placeWas filled with light;—I did not dream:In beauty and in love supreme,Before me shone our Lady’s face.(O would I could behold it now)The coronal upon her brow,With star-like jewels thickly set,The Sovereign presence certified.Pure as the snow that lingered yetOn solemn heights, with sunrise dyed,Her raiment gleamed. “Weep not,” she said,And toward me stretched her sacred handsAs if to raise my drooping head;“Be comforted! the triple bandsOf grief and painWhich Death around thy heart has coiledShall part in twain;If secret sin thy soul hath soiled,If thou thy lover loved too well,The Seraphs say in high debate,‘Better excessive love than hate,Save hate of hell.’If fiends infest this desert IsleRegard them not; the soul whose trustOn Heaven leans, may calmly smileAt Satan’s utmost stretch of guileAnd tread down evil things like dust.The working of the wicked curseBranded upon thyself and nurseShall cease with dawn of hallowed days;She fitting sepulture hath foundUnder and yet not under ground;Here leave her kneeling by the child,Here, where the power thy God displaysShall keep their bodies undefiled,Shall change to marble, flesh and bone.Then come, and leave the dead alone;Come hence!—thy round of days complete,Thy babe and lover shalt thou meetIn Paradise.Look up, arise!My hands will guide thy fainting feet.”She led me to the outer light,And ere a second breath I drew,Ere I could fix my dazzled view,She vanished from my misted sight.Resigned, uplifted, forth I went,But, oh! ’tis hard to nurse contentIn silent walls; to ever meetWith filling eyes the vacant seat;To tread from day to day aloneThe silent ways, familiar grown,Where dear companionship has shedA glory and a rapture fled;Where every hillock, tree and stoneAre memories of a loved one, dead!Again the flowering springtime came,The wedding-time of happy birds,But not, oh! not for me the same;To whom could I address fond words?The violet and maple leaf,Had they but known my wintry grief,They would not have appeared so soon.I could not bear to look uponThe beauty of the kindling dawn,Nor sunset, nor the rising moon,Nor listen to the wooing notesThat warbled from a thousand throats,From cool of morn till heat of noon.My soul was with the wind that sighedAmong the tree-tops; all the wideWaste desolation of the seaPossessed me; I could not agreeWith aught of earth or firmament.Where could I go? which way I wentHis melancholy shade did glideBehind the rocks, among the trees,And whispered in the twilight breezeEndearments whispered long ago.In constancy of love and fearMy sick heart bore his heavy bier,How lovingly the angels know.I knew not of my lost love’s tomb,Whether amid the shrouding gloomOf some tenebrous yawning chasm,Or in the watery world’s abysm,He met those spectres of my dream;No trace, no sign, no faintest gleamDid all my questing ever show.’Twas well, perchance, that this was so;But may I not believe that yet,Long after we again have met,I shall know all? shall hear him tellWhat on that dreadful night befell,And how when in the toils of deathHe called me with his latest breathAnd blessed me? It will magnifyThe joys of that dear home on highIf memory keep our bygone woe,Our grievings of this world below.A huntress of the woods I grew,Necessity my frailty taughtTo track the fleetest quarry throughThe forest, wet with morning dew,Unheedful of the bruises wroughtOn tender feet; the wounds receivedFrom thorns whose leafy garb deceivedMy glowing limbs. My loosened hairI freely gave to every wind,Content to feel it stream behind,Or drift across my bosom bare.So passed the uneventful days,The sad monotony of weeks,Till August suns had ceased to blaze;Till o’er the forest’s hectic cheeksA languishing and slumbering haze,The mellow Indian Summer crept;It was as if chaste Dryads weptAt sign of Winter’s coming tread,Till from their falling tears was spreadThose exhalations o’er the woodsAmid whose greenest solitudesTheir festivals of joy they kept.So came the Autumn’s ruddy prime,And all my hopes, which had no morrow,Like sea-weed cast upon the beach,Like drift-wood barely out of reachOf waves that were attuned to sorrow,Lay lifeless on the strand of time.So ebbed my life till beamed the hourWhen burst in sudden bloom the flowerOf merciful deliverance.That day I walked as in a trance,My dismal round, as was my wont,To many a joy forsaken hauntWhere oft upon my lover’s breastMy head had lain in blissful rest,Till coming to that sea-beat heightWhere erst, enrobed in golden light,His hands, aglow with love, conferredUpon my brow the spousal wreath,Whilst heaven and all things underneathHis words of sweet adorement heard.There failed my limbs, and long I sateAt one with thoughts grown desperate.Two winters had I known since firstI stood upon that Isle accurst,The third a near, and how could IIts killing frosts and snows defy?Surely ’twere better now to die.So ran my thoughts, and fair in sightThe breakers tossed their plumes of white,The same as on that fearful dayWhen bravely through their blinding sprayMy menaced lover fought his way.I listened to their luring speechTill lost in lornest fantasy;Till toward me they did seem to reachWhite jewelled hands to join with mine.I rose and answered: “I am thine,Thou desolate and widowed Sea,That late hath come to pity me.My lost Eugene! ’neath yonder waveOh should thy faithful MargueriteThy lonely corse in darkness meetHow calm, how blest will be my grave!Sweet babe, adieu! and thou, Nanette,With tearful eyes on Heaven set,Thy watch beside my Lua keep.”Forward I stepped, prepared to leap;—One loving thought, one hasty glanceSent o’er the deep to sunny France,When hove directly into viewA sail, a ship! could it be true?Or but a phantom sent to mockMy madness on that lonely rock?Agape I stood with staring eyesAn instant, then my frantic criesWent o’er the deep, they heard, they saw,Those mariners, and from the mawOf Death my timely rescue made.My Country’s flag the good ship bore,And just as day began to fadeWe parted from that fatal shore,And long ere moonrise many a mileTo northward loomed the Demon’s Isle.Soon, homeward bound, again I trodMy native soil, and thanked my GodFor that on me he deigned to smile.Here ends my tale. And now, I pray,If I have stumbled on the way,Have shown but little tuneful skillIn this wild chant of good and ill,My faults, my frowardness forgive.Here, a sad vestal, let me live,And share with you the peaceful blissThat points a better world than this;Here shall I seek from Heaven to winForgiveness for my days of sin;Here shall my soul in prayer ascendFor him I loved; my godlike friend,My Husband! if that honored nameIs due to one who naught of blame,No falsehood, no unmanly artEre harbored in his open heart,Then truly can nor ban nor barDeny it to the lost Lamar.And if at times his spirit flits,Even here within this holy place,With mournful eyes before my face,And by my couch in silence sitsTill blooms the morn, I dare not prayThe gentle shade to haste away.
How softly have my limbs reposed!Nor stormy sea, nor haunted land,Nor sorcerer’s unhallowed wand,Disturbed the opiate shades that closedThe sleepy avenues of sense;And therefore I, without pretenceOf weariness or dream-wrought gloom,My tale of yester-eve resume.Together o’er the mystic IsleWe wandered many a sinuous mile.’Twas midway in the month of June,And rivulets with lisping rune,And bowering trees of tender green,And flowering shrubs their trunks betweenEnticed our steps till gloaming grayUpon the pathless forest lay.Think not I journeyed void of fear;Sir Roberval’s hot maledictionLike hurtling thunder sounded near;Our steps the envious demons haunted,And peeped, or seemed to peep and leer,From rocky clefts and caverns drear.But still defiantly, undaunted,Eugene averred it had been heldBy wise philosophers of eldThat all such sights and sounds are mereFantastic tricks of eye and ear,And only meet for tales of fiction.“Heed not,” he said, “the vicious threat,’Twas but a ruffian’s empty talk,The which I pray thou may’st forgetAnd half his evil purpose baulk.”A silent doubt and grateful kissWas all I could oppose to this.But firmer grew my steps. The airWas laden with delicious balm;Rich exhalations everywhere,From pine and spruce and cedar grove,And over all a dreamy calm,An affluence of brooding love,A palpable, beneficentSufficiency of blest content.Amid the hours, in restful pauseWe loitered on the moss-clad rocks,And listened to the sober cawsOf lonely rooks, and watched thick flocksOf pigeons passing overhead;Or where the scarlet grosbeak sped,A wingéd fire, through clumps of pineSent chasing looks of joy and wonder.Blue violets and celandine,And modest ferns that glanced from underGray-hooded boulders, seemed to say—“O, tarry, gentle folk; O, stay,For we are lonely in this wood,And sigh for human sympathyTo cheer our days of solitude.”Meek forest flowers, how dear to me!I loved them, kissed them on the stem,And felt that I must ever beSecluded from the world like them.The long-drawn shadows, eastward cast,Admonished us that day was fastDissolving, and would soon be past;And we must needs regain the spotWhere waited good Nanette our coming.The chattering squirrel we heeded not,Nor paused to list the partridge drumming.The wedded bird was in her nest,And knew from the suspended song(A tribute to her listening ear)That from the green boughs rustling nearHad trilled and warbled all day long,A brief space only must she waitThe fondling of her chirping mate.With some wise meaning, wise and deepThat from her eyes was fain to peep,And wealth of words and lifted handsOur thoughtful servitor, Nanette,Gave kindly greeting ere we met.“Come, children, follow me,” she said,And silently the way she ledAn arpent from the ocean sands,Directly to a piny grove,Where she with wondrous skill had woveA double bower of evergreen,Meet for a fairy king and queen.—“There, tell your rosaries and takeA sabbath slumber; till you wake,Nanette, hard by, will watchful stand,With loaded arquebuse in hand,Your trusty sentinel, for hereSome prowling beast may chance appearOn no good neighbour’s lawful quest;To-morrow I can doze and rest.”—Thus, voluble, my faithful Nurse.Amazed, I stood and could not speak,But kissed her on the brow and cheek,And wept to think my Uncle’s curseShould fall on her, so worn and bent,So moved with every good intent.A flushing joy it was to seeThat double-chambered arbour fair,Re-calling to my memoryThe storied lore of things that wereMy childhood’s moonlit witchery.Next morn we sought the circling strandAnd question made of wind and seaIf such a thing might ever be,That, soon or late, from any landSome friendly sail would come that wayAnd waft us thence: in vain, in vain!The hollow wind had nought to say,But, like a troubled ghost, passed by;—The waste illimitable mainAnd awful silence of the skyVouchsafed no sign, made no reply.—Oft times upon some lifted rockThat overhung the waves, we sateAnd listened to the undershockWhose sad persistency, like fate,Made land and sea more desolate.Again in lighter mood we trodThe yellow sands and pale-green sodStrewn with innumerable shells,In whose pink whorls and breathing cellsBeauty and wonder slept enshrined,Like holy thoughts in a dreamer’s mind.Of these sea-waifs an ample storeWe gathered, and at twilight boreThe treasure to our sylvan home.Once more the star encumbered domeOf heaven its thrilling story told,And Dian, lovely as of old,Poured lavishly her pallid sheenUpon that tranquil world of green;Whose cool and dewy depths, now rifeWith luminous and noiseless life,Responded wide; the fire-fly raceIn myriads lit their tiny lamps;As an army’s countless campsThe warder in some woody placeAt nightfall on his watch may trace;So gleamed and flashed those mimic lamps.The third day came. From shore to shore,Adventurous ever more and more,Our penal Isle we wandered o’er.—Which way our roving fancy led,A wilding beauty largely spreadRewarded our ambitious feet,And made our banishment too sweetFor further censure or repining.Now culling flowers of dainty dyes,Now chasing gaudy butterflies,And now on herbaged slopes reclining,Where purple blooms of lilac trees,And sultry hum of hermit beesDisarmed the hours of weariness.—Nor can you fail, dear friends, to guessThat time for dalliance we found,—And if we loved to an excessIn many a long involved caress,O think how we were cribbed and bound.—Lush nature and necessity,As witnessed by the Saints above,In one delicious circle woveThe pulsings of our destiny.The great rude world was far away,And like a troubled vision layOutside our thoughts; its cold deceits,The babble of its noisy streets,And all the selfish rivalryThat courts and castles propagateWere alien to our new estate.—A fragment of propitious sky,Whereon a puff of cloud might lie,Through verdured boughs o’er-arching seen,And glimpses of the sea betweenFar stretches of majestic trees,Such peaceful sanctities as theseWere our abiding joyance now.Cheerily and with lifted browEugene led on, where tamaracs grew,And where tall elms their shadows threwAthwart a little glen whereinA virgin brook seemed glad to winThe pressure of our thirsty lips.Pleasant it was to linger thereAnd cool our fevered finger-tipsIn that pellucid stream and shareThe solace of the ocean breeze.For summer heats were now aglow,The fox sat down and took his ease,The hare moved purposeless and slow;But louder rang the blue jay’s scream,The woodpeck tapped the naked tree,Nor ceased the simple chickadeeTo twitter in the noonday beam.—My lover, wheresoe’er we strayed,Made search in every charmed nook,And angled in the winding brookFor all sweet flowers that love the shadeTo twine for me a bridal braid.Pale yellow lilies, nursed by rocksRifted and scarred by lightning shocks,Or earthquake; river buds and pinks,And modest snow-drops, pearly white,And lilies of the vale uniteTheir beauty in close-loving linksAround a scented woodbine fairTo coronate my dark brown hair.The fragile fern and clover sweetOn that enchanted circlet meet;Young roses lent their blushing hues,Nor could the cedar leaf refuseWith helmet flowers to intertwineIts glossy amplitude divine.—Emerging from that solemn wood,High on a rocky cliff we stoodAt set of sun; far, far awayThe splendors of departing dayUpon the barren ocean lay.—There on that lone sea-beaten height,Investured in a golden light,Eugene, with looks half sad, whole sweet,Upon my brow the garland set,At once a chaplet and aigrette,And said: “Be crowned, my Marguerite!My own true soul, my ever dearCompanion in this wilderness.Though hopeful still, I sometimes fearThat days of darkness and distressMay come to thee when woods are sere,—When it may baffle all my skillTo guard thee from white winter’s chill;—But hence all raven-thoughts of ill,Let me believe that Nature willRelax her rigour, having caughtThe soft infection of those eyesIn whose blue depths my image lies,Even as my soul, with love distraught,Like a lone star drowned in the sea,Is wholly drowned and lost in thee.—Love is our own essential being,Sole sovereign over utmost fate,Its own sufficient laws decreeing,Immortal and immaculate;And when this mild ethereal flameTo mortal man was kindly given’Twas surely meant by highest HeavenThat never aught of evil nameShould dare attempt to thwart its power.—Then let us, dearest, from this hourDefy the future, and pursueThe unimagined pleasure dueTo such surpassing love as ours.One moment in thy folding armsAlone in these sequestered bowers;One throb of thy impassioned heart,Now speaking audibly to mine,And saying, ‘It were death to part;’One honey-dew caress of thine,Out-sums a million rude alarms,Out-lives whole centuries that weighOn loveless souls, on sordid clay,That gravitate to ways of shame,And know love’s magic but by name.—These roseate skies will change their hue;This pomp of leaves when autumn lowersThe windy ways of earth will strew;This aromatic crown of flowers,Made sacred now since worn by you,To-morrow will begin to fade.—But love, sweet spirit, linked as ours,By sad vicissitude o’erlaid,Endures, unchanged by any breathOf adverse fate, and surely willLife’s last inevitable chillSurvive, and triumph over death.”—Thus, eloquent, the radiant youth,Like one inspired with sacred truth,Fair as Adonis, o’er me breathedThe incense of pure love, and wreathedMy heart in dewy dreams of bliss.Consenting Nature, pleased the while,Bestowed upon her outcast IsleThe magic of a mother’s smile.Spent Sol impressed his warmest kissOn ocean’s brow; the wanton windWent sighing up and down to findMeet objects for his soft embraceAll things to amity inclined;Fierce bird and beast forebore to chaseTheir feeble prey, as if they feltLove’s universal breathings meltTheir savage instincts; everywhere,Like mute enchantment in the air,This subtle permeating powerReigned sole. O, blest ambrosial hour!O, halcyon days that followed after,With music from my lute, and laughter,And song and jest, and such full measureOf secret love’s exhaustless treasureAs gave to pain the wings of pleasure!—So fled our summer dream, as fliesAn angel through cerulean skiesOn some good errand swiftly bent,So brief its stay that ere we wist,Gruff Autumn, garmented in mist.His courier winds before him sent,The which, equipped with sleet and hail,Beat down as with an iron flailThe grandeur of the woods, and leftTheir naked solitudes bereftOf bird and flower. The trees stood starkAnd desolate against the darkChaotic sky. The mighty seaIts billows hurled upon the shoreAs if resolved to over-pourAnd gulph our prison-house. Ah, me!All roofless now, save here and thereA tall pine stretched its spear-shaped headAloft into the gelid air;The hemlock, too, its beauty spread,A tent-like pyramid of green,Symbols of hope amid a sceneWhere hope grew pale at winter’s tread.No more, along the sounding shore,In hushed voluptuous dells, no more,Nor on the perilous rock which gaveRude welcome to the climbing wave,Might we, in amplitude of joy,Our paradisal hours employ,—From green to gray, from gray to white,So rapidly the change came on,It seemed but the work of a single nightAnd all our faery world was gone.—Down came the snow, compact, hard-drivenBy all the scourging blasts of heaven,Until, like clouds, dethroned and hurledTumultuous to this nether world,Around the desert isle it lay,A rampart to the ocean’s spray.Half hid where friendly pine trees spreadPerpetual shelter overhead,Hugging a hillside lifted highBetwixt us and the arctic sky,Our cabin stood; a poor defenceAgainst the mute omnipotenceOf searching and insidious frost,Which, like a ghoul condemned and lost,The closeness of an inmate claimed;—But on the rustic hearthstone flamedDry wood and pine-knots resinous:A ready and abundant hoardWhen days were long our hands had storedAgainst the season perilous;And good Nanette, ’twas her desireTo feed the bickering tongues of fireThat warned the dumb intruder hence.When night fell thick, I loved to sitAnd watch the fire-gleams fall and flitOn wooden walls and birch-bark ceiling,Among the densest shadows stealing,Till these, in folds and festoons golden,Like tapestry of castles olden,Shifted and fluttered free, revealingTo fancy’s charmed and wiser visionSuch fabrics as in looms elysianThe angels weave; and thus our hutA palace seemed; and was it notMore beautiful, illumed the whileBy dear Eugene’s adoring smile,Than many a royal chamber where,Concealed amid the gloss and glare,A thousand hateful evils are?—Such fare as woodland wilds afford,Supplied our ever-cheerful board;Nor such alone; the salt sea waveIts tributary largess gave,All that our lenten wants might crave.Slow crept the whitened months, so slow—I sometimes felt I never moreShould see the pretty roses blow,Or tread on aught but endless snow,And listen to the nightly roarOf tempest and the ocean flow.Weird voices, woven with the wind,Riding on darkness often cameAnd syllabled the buried nameOf Roberval, which, like a hearse,Bore inward to my palsied mindThe ghost of his inhuman curse.Was it sick fancy, sore misled,That to my shuddering spirit said?—“Those sounds that shake the midnight air,Are threats of Shapes that will not spareYour trespass on their fief accurst.”“Hush, hush, my love,” Eugene would say,“That cry which o’er our cabin burst,Came from the owls, perched royallyAmong the pine-tops; you but heardThe language of some beast or bird;The mooing of a mother bear,An hungered in her frozen lair;The laugh and mooing of the loonThat welcometh the rising moon.The howling of the wolves you hear,In chase of some unhappy deer,Impeded in its desperate flightBy deep and thickly crusted snows,O’er which its lighter-footed foesPursue like shadows of the night.That lengthened groan, that fearful shriekWas but the grinding stress and creakOf aged trees; they seem to feelThe wrench of storms, and make appealFor mercy; in their ducts and cellsThe sap, which is their life-blood, swellsWhen frosts prevail and bursts asunderWith sharp report its prison walls;Then cease, beloved, to fear and wonderFor all these harmless peals and calls.In sweet assurance rest, love, restThy head on this devoted breast,And dream sweet dreams; the gentle springWill come anon, and birds will singAs sweetly as they sang last year;And shall I not be ever nearTo share with thee the murmuringOf waking life? the humble beeWill drone again as blissfullyAs when from flower to flower he wentAnd to the choral symphonyHis basso horn serenely lent.”—My fears were laid; I ceased to think;Athirst and eager still to drinkThe nectar of his speech.How oft,If he but chanced to hear me sighWhen wild winds blew, or when the softAnd flaky harvest of the skyDescended silent, he would sitUnder that snow-thatched roof and tellSuch marvellous tales of mirth and wit,They held me like a wizard’s spell.Or else some poet’s plaintive verseThat breathed soft vows of youth and maiden,With love-begotten sorrow laden,In twilight tones he would rehearse;And whilst the rhythmic measure flowedFrom those attuned lips, my breastWith trepidation heaved and glowed,For in such guise was well expressedThe master-passion’s undertone,Or happy or disconsolate,Of many a lover’s wayward fateThat bore some semblance to our own.’Twere over-much to pause and tellHow slid the weeks, and all befellEre we could to the heavens say,“The terror of your rage is past,The gnawing frost, the biting blast,And life is in the matin ray.”—The swallow came, the heron’s screamAthwart the marsh-lands, through the woods,Sped resonant; I ceased to dreamOf demons, and my waking moodsThe radiance of the morning took.Upon the bare brown leaves I stood,And saw and heard with raptured lookThe gleam and murmur of the brook,Which we in summer’s plenitudeHad traced to many an arbored nook.’Twas midmost in the budding May,Whilst on my couch of cedar boughs,Perturbed with nameless fears I lay,And breathed to Heaven my silent vows,—A cloud-like cope of purple hueDescended o’er me, hid me quite,And seemed a soft wind round it blew,And from the mystic wind a voiceSpoke low: “Poor child of darkened light!The pure of heart are Heaven’s choice;The Virgin who hath seen thy tears,In pity for thy tender years,Will aid thee in thine utmost plight.”A hallowed tremor o’er me crept,And in that purple cloud I sleptEnshrined, how long I never knew;—And through my dreams the soft wind blewLike music heard at dusk or dawn,And when I woke and found it gone,In fullness of great joy I wept.’Twas thus a new revealment came,A something out of nothingness,To which we gave the simple nameOf Lua. O, the first caressA mother to her first-born gives!—Methinks the angels must confess,Through all the after ages’ lives,An influence so pure and holy,That human hearts, the proud and lowly,Are touched thereby. I kissed, and kissedMy pretty babe, and through the mistOf happy tears upon it gazedIn silent thankfulness, and praisedThe Empress of the skies, whose graceHad glorified that humble place.The sandy marge again we trodRound the green Isle, and felt that GodWas very near,—in ocean’s roar,And in the zephyr’s scented breath,In summer green, in winter hoar,In joy, in grief, in life, in death,Our Friend and Father evermore.Again across the naked sea,—In tumult or in blank repose,At morn and noon, and evening close,—Sick yearnings from our souls were sent.But bootless still the hungry sigh,A southward sail still southward went,If any such we might descry,—As twice or thrice it chanced to be,We saw or fancied shimmering,Like a white eagle’s outstretched wing,Hiding the strait and dubious spaceThat separates the lifted faceOf ocean from the stooping sky.The sail would melt, the hollow domeAbove us and our prison home,And girdling waves, and sobbing rain,And winds full-fledged,—all things that wereOf earth and sky, of sea and air,Strangled sweet Hope, and in the pitOf outer darkness buried it.Yet seemed it sinful to complain,When to our feast of love was givenThe fairest fruit that gracious HeavenHad e’er for human joyance shed.Sweet Innocence! the small hands spread,Dimpled and white, catching at thingsViewless to us, but clearly seenBy those wide-open eyes; the wingsOf heavenly guests it must have beenFluttering near the sinless child,Azure and golden, till she smiledAnd shrank from their excessive sheen.Again the forest’s green arcadesGladly we paced; their sun-lit shadesInvestured us; the laughing brookThat solaced us the year before,Mirrored again my lingering look;In that clear glass I could not failTo see my face grown somewhat pale,But not less fair; we trod once moreThe lofty cliff whereon EugeneHad crowned me his bride and queen.Pleasant those summer days to walkWhere no intrusive step could baulkOur happiness; no tongue to dareWhisper disparagement, and bareThe mysteries of Love’s free-will,Approved of Heaven to strive for still,The liberty that angels share.—Another summer’s beauty dead,Another winter’s cerements woundOn tree and shrub; the sheeted ground,The cruel storm-land overhead,The scream of frightened birds, the windThat in its teeth the tree-tops tookAnd worried all day long and shook,These and the monstrous ocean blindWith foamy wrath, were ours once more;—Once more within our cabin mewedUnder the pine-tops, crisp and hoar,My fears their old alarms pursued.Four times the moon had waxed and wanedSince summer blooms, so bright and brief,Were mourned for by the falling leaf,And winter winds were all unchained,When came the direful, fatal day.The Spectre of the wide world cameIn league with winter’s fierce array,In league with fiends that hissed the nameOf Death around the ruined Isle.Deep lay the snow, pile heaped on pile,When food fell scant, and on a morn,Ere yet the infant light was born,Eager-thus always to provide,Eugene forsook my drowsy side,And lavished on my happy lipsHis silent love; then gently slips,Upon the little callow heapThat lay embalmed in downy sleepHis softest kisses: happy child!She made a little stir and smiled,As if in soothest dreams she knewWhence came that quiet fond adieu.Then pausing at the windy door,His arquebuse on shoulder laid,And in his belt a shining blade,His brow a troubled shadow wore;—Or was it but my own blurred thoughtA semblance of foreboding wrought?Backward he moved, a tardy pace,And toward me turned his comely faceAnd said: “Dear love, I thought to goEre thou shouldst wake, for well I knowThese frequent partings, though but brief,Aye touch thy tender heart with grief.”“Loud blows the nor-wind,” I replied.“Surely thou needst not haste awayBefore the leaden eyes of DayOn our small world are opened wide;For all these partings, my Eugene,Are bitter drops that fall betweenOur honied draughts of happiness;Ah! well I know what dangerous toil,What weary hours companionless,Are thine in quest of needful spoil,Be-wrenched, from stubborn wood and wave,Wherein—Oh God!—an early graveMay compass thee; and I remainA wretched mourner, doomed to bearThe burning curse and bitter baneBequeathed me by Sir Roberval;—O stay, Eugene, stay yet awhile!Just now I dreamt I saw thee borneBy Shapes unshapely, stark and shorn,Three times around the darkened Isle;Then did the heavens o’er thee bend,And in a cloud thou didst ascend,Lost to the world and me forever.”“Twas but a dream,” he said, “no more,”But saying which, a painful quiverHis lips betrayed, then cheerily boreHis manly head, and thus made end.“No evil can such dreams portend:—Nor need I, dearest, say farewell;For love and faith cannot deceive,And hence I cannot but believe,What holy whispers round me tell,That though thou tarriest here behind,Thy spirit journeyeth with me,Clasping me round whereso I be,A shelter from the bruising wind,A covert from the drenching sea.Then rest, my own brave Marguerite,Rest thee in trust; ’tis meet that IThe savage elements defyFor thy loved sake, and for the sweet,Sweet sake of her who slumbers there,Pillowed upon her golden hair,Her beauty, love, so like thine own;—Sweet babe! dear wife!” Ere I could speakHe kissed the tear-drop from my cheek,And ere I wist I was alone,The door stood wide, and he had passedInto the dusky void, and vastUncertainties concealed by Fate.Ah, me! I could but watch and waitFor his return. For his return?I felt my heart within me burn,Then sicken to an icy dread,For seemed a sad voice near me said,“Thou ne’er shall see his face again!”The paragon of noblest men!It could not be; I would not ownA prophecy that turned to stoneAll joys that I had ever known.The wind increased, the day wore on,And ere the hour was half-way goneThat follows noon, a storm of snowBlinded the heavens, and denser grew,And fiercer still the fierce wind blewAs night approached, a night of woe,Such as no fiend might add thereto.The double darkness walled us in,The blackness of the storm and night,And still he came not! O, what sin,What blasphemy against the lightOf Heaven had my soul committed?Never before had eventideOnce found him absent from my side.Eugene came not! deceived, outwitted,Sore tempest-tossed and lured astray.By demons, when the night-owl flittedAcross his face at close of day,Groping for home, exhausted, faint,No angel near, no pitying saintTo aid his steps and point the way.From ebb of day till noon of night,And onward till return of light,The signal horn, Nanette and I,Alternate blew, but for replyThe wind’s unprecedented roar,And ocean thundering round the shoreOur labor mocked; and other sounds,Nor of the land, nor sea, nor sky,Our ears profaned; the unleashed houndsOf spleenful hell were all abroad,And round our snow-bound cabin trod,And stormed on clashing wings aloof,And stamped upon the yielding roof,And all our lamentation jeered.Down the wide chimney-gorge they peeredWith great green eye-balls fringed with flame;—The holy cross I kissed and reared,And in sweet Mary’s blessed name,Who erst had buoyed my sinking heart,Conjured the foul-faced fiends depart.Their shriekings made a storm more loudThan that before whose fury bowedThe hundred-ringéd oaken trees;More fearful, more appalling theseThan thunder from the thunder-cloud;But trembling at the sacred sign,And mention of the Name divine,They dared not, could not disobey,But fled in baffled rage away.—The morrow came, and still the morrow,But neither time, nor pain, nor sorrow,Nor any evil thing could makeMy stricken soul advisement takeOf aught that in the world of senseThe fiat of OmnipotenceMight choose prescribe; I only knowThat fever came, whose fiery flowSurged through the temple-gates of thought,Till merciful delirium wroughtRelease from knowledge, from a worldWhere Death’s black banner stood unfurled.—Restored—condemned—to conscious life,The parting hour, the storm, the strife,Rose from their tombs and dimly passed,But on my spirit only castA feeble shade. When known the worst,When every joy that love has nursedLies cold and dead, a sullen calmSheds on the bleeding heart a balmThat is not peace, and does not heal,But makes it half content to feelThe frost upon the withered leaf,To see love’s lifeboat rock and reelAnd founder on the stormy reef.A languid stupor, chill and gray,Upon my listless being lay—I knew and felt Eugene was not;—I saw that in the osier cot,Constructed by his cunning skill,My babe lay sleeping, very still:So very still and pale was she,That when I questioned, quietly,How long since she had fallen asleep,Nanette could only moan and weep,And rock her body to and fro.—With cautious step, and stooping low,I took the little dimpled handIn mine, and felt the waxen brow.O, Queen of Heaven! clearly now,’Twas given me to understandThat all the warmth of life had fled;My babe, my pretty babe, was dead!—In stupefaction fixed I stoodSmitten afresh; a wailing cry,The wounded love of motherhood,Rose from my heart; mine eyes were dryDenied the blessed drops that giveA little ease, that we may live—Live on, to feel with every breathThat life is but the mask of death.Regardful of my frozen gaze,Hard set upon the frozen face,Nanette, at length, in halting phrase,Her painful pass essayed to trace:Told how, when hot the fever ranAlong my veins, and when the wanAnd wasted moonshine fringed the hearth,And voices that were not of earthCame through the gloom, the famished child,With pouting lips and eyelids mild,Her wonted nourishment did crave;And how, O God forgive! she gaveThe little mouth its wish. She toldHow dismal were the nights and cold,Her haunted hours of rest how few,And how my precious darling drewFrom the distempered fevered fountThe malady that raged in me.How long it was, the tangled count,One week or two, or maybe three—Her head astray, she could not tell,When rang, she said, a silvery bell,A-tolling softly far away.So softly tolling, faint and far,When quiet as the morning star,That cannot brook the glare of day,And seeks the upper azure deep,My Lua (pardon if I weep),Pure nestling of this sinful breast,Had struggled into gracious rest.Unhappy nurse! that hallowed knellWhich on her pious fancy fellThrough midnight dreams was solace meetFor one whose slow, uncertain feetTheir journey’s end had well-nigh gained;Whose meagre face drooped, pinched and pained,From ague-fits that lately shookAll gladness from its kindly look.No longer in those furrows playedThe gleams of mirth that erst had madeHer gossip by the cabin fire,A pleasing hum; for she had storeOf gruesome tales and faery lore,Which suited with the elfin quireOf winds that on the waste of night.Their voices spent; ’twas her delight,In calmer hours, her voice to strainWith lays of roving TroubadourThat from her girlhood’s bloom had lainMid memory’s tuneful cords secure.How changed she was! soon, soon I feltMy pity for her dolour melt.My friend and sole companion now,—I brushed the gray hairs from her browAnd kissed it; then came back to meThe days when on that palsied kneeI perched, a happy child; where lateMy babe, my second self had sate:—Strange orbiting of time and fate.Hid in the upheaved scarp of rockThat screened our hut from winter’s shockA cave there was of spacious bound,Wherein no wave of human soundHad ever rolled; imprisoned there,Like a grey penitent at prayer,Hoar Silence wept, and from the tearsEmbroidered hangings, fold on fold,And silver tassels tinct with goldThe fingering of the voiceless yearsHad deftly wrought, and on the wallsIn sumptuous breadth of foamy fallsThe product of their genius hung.From floor to ceiling, arched and high—A counterfeited cloudy sky,—Smooth alabaster pillars sprung.On either side might one espyWhat seemed hushed oratories rareInviting sinful knees to prayer.Into that chapel-like retreat,Untrod before by human feet,The wicker cot, wherein still layMy Lua’s uncorrupted clayWe bore, and in an alcove’s shadeOur tear-dewed burthen softly laid.Long muffled in my heavy woe,I knelt beside the little bedAnd many a tearful Ave said.At length, at length, I rose to go,But kneeling still, my poor Nanette,Her crucifix and beads of jetClasped in her praying hands, stirred not,Nor spoke;—our flickering lampThrough the sepulchral gloom and dampMade sickly twilight round the cot.Orbed in her upturned hollow eyesTwo tear-drops gleamed. I said, “Arise!Come, come away. Good sister, come!”Still motionless as death and dumb,—I shook her gently, spoke again,When sudden horror and affrightLaid hold upon my reeling brain;Her soul, unshrived, had winged its flight!—I sank upon the clammy stone,The lamp died out and all was night.“Mother of God! alone! alone!”I cried in agonized despair,“O pity me! O Mary spare!A mother’s anguish hast thou known,O pity me! alone! alone!”A thousand startled echoes sprangForth from their stony crypts, and rangA ghostly miserere roundThe cavern’s dread Cimmerian bound,Till sinking to a dying moanThey answered back, “alone! alone!”“Nay, not alone, poor Marguerite!”I heard a voice divinely sweet,And in a moment’s awful spaceThat silent subterranean placeWas filled with light;—I did not dream:In beauty and in love supreme,Before me shone our Lady’s face.(O would I could behold it now)The coronal upon her brow,With star-like jewels thickly set,The Sovereign presence certified.Pure as the snow that lingered yetOn solemn heights, with sunrise dyed,Her raiment gleamed. “Weep not,” she said,And toward me stretched her sacred handsAs if to raise my drooping head;“Be comforted! the triple bandsOf grief and painWhich Death around thy heart has coiledShall part in twain;If secret sin thy soul hath soiled,If thou thy lover loved too well,The Seraphs say in high debate,‘Better excessive love than hate,Save hate of hell.’If fiends infest this desert IsleRegard them not; the soul whose trustOn Heaven leans, may calmly smileAt Satan’s utmost stretch of guileAnd tread down evil things like dust.The working of the wicked curseBranded upon thyself and nurseShall cease with dawn of hallowed days;She fitting sepulture hath foundUnder and yet not under ground;Here leave her kneeling by the child,Here, where the power thy God displaysShall keep their bodies undefiled,Shall change to marble, flesh and bone.Then come, and leave the dead alone;Come hence!—thy round of days complete,Thy babe and lover shalt thou meetIn Paradise.Look up, arise!My hands will guide thy fainting feet.”She led me to the outer light,And ere a second breath I drew,Ere I could fix my dazzled view,She vanished from my misted sight.Resigned, uplifted, forth I went,But, oh! ’tis hard to nurse contentIn silent walls; to ever meetWith filling eyes the vacant seat;To tread from day to day aloneThe silent ways, familiar grown,Where dear companionship has shedA glory and a rapture fled;Where every hillock, tree and stoneAre memories of a loved one, dead!Again the flowering springtime came,The wedding-time of happy birds,But not, oh! not for me the same;To whom could I address fond words?The violet and maple leaf,Had they but known my wintry grief,They would not have appeared so soon.I could not bear to look uponThe beauty of the kindling dawn,Nor sunset, nor the rising moon,Nor listen to the wooing notesThat warbled from a thousand throats,From cool of morn till heat of noon.My soul was with the wind that sighedAmong the tree-tops; all the wideWaste desolation of the seaPossessed me; I could not agreeWith aught of earth or firmament.Where could I go? which way I wentHis melancholy shade did glideBehind the rocks, among the trees,And whispered in the twilight breezeEndearments whispered long ago.In constancy of love and fearMy sick heart bore his heavy bier,How lovingly the angels know.I knew not of my lost love’s tomb,Whether amid the shrouding gloomOf some tenebrous yawning chasm,Or in the watery world’s abysm,He met those spectres of my dream;No trace, no sign, no faintest gleamDid all my questing ever show.’Twas well, perchance, that this was so;But may I not believe that yet,Long after we again have met,I shall know all? shall hear him tellWhat on that dreadful night befell,And how when in the toils of deathHe called me with his latest breathAnd blessed me? It will magnifyThe joys of that dear home on highIf memory keep our bygone woe,Our grievings of this world below.A huntress of the woods I grew,Necessity my frailty taughtTo track the fleetest quarry throughThe forest, wet with morning dew,Unheedful of the bruises wroughtOn tender feet; the wounds receivedFrom thorns whose leafy garb deceivedMy glowing limbs. My loosened hairI freely gave to every wind,Content to feel it stream behind,Or drift across my bosom bare.So passed the uneventful days,The sad monotony of weeks,Till August suns had ceased to blaze;Till o’er the forest’s hectic cheeksA languishing and slumbering haze,The mellow Indian Summer crept;It was as if chaste Dryads weptAt sign of Winter’s coming tread,Till from their falling tears was spreadThose exhalations o’er the woodsAmid whose greenest solitudesTheir festivals of joy they kept.So came the Autumn’s ruddy prime,And all my hopes, which had no morrow,Like sea-weed cast upon the beach,Like drift-wood barely out of reachOf waves that were attuned to sorrow,Lay lifeless on the strand of time.So ebbed my life till beamed the hourWhen burst in sudden bloom the flowerOf merciful deliverance.That day I walked as in a trance,My dismal round, as was my wont,To many a joy forsaken hauntWhere oft upon my lover’s breastMy head had lain in blissful rest,Till coming to that sea-beat heightWhere erst, enrobed in golden light,His hands, aglow with love, conferredUpon my brow the spousal wreath,Whilst heaven and all things underneathHis words of sweet adorement heard.There failed my limbs, and long I sateAt one with thoughts grown desperate.Two winters had I known since firstI stood upon that Isle accurst,The third a near, and how could IIts killing frosts and snows defy?Surely ’twere better now to die.So ran my thoughts, and fair in sightThe breakers tossed their plumes of white,The same as on that fearful dayWhen bravely through their blinding sprayMy menaced lover fought his way.I listened to their luring speechTill lost in lornest fantasy;Till toward me they did seem to reachWhite jewelled hands to join with mine.I rose and answered: “I am thine,Thou desolate and widowed Sea,That late hath come to pity me.My lost Eugene! ’neath yonder waveOh should thy faithful MargueriteThy lonely corse in darkness meetHow calm, how blest will be my grave!Sweet babe, adieu! and thou, Nanette,With tearful eyes on Heaven set,Thy watch beside my Lua keep.”Forward I stepped, prepared to leap;—One loving thought, one hasty glanceSent o’er the deep to sunny France,When hove directly into viewA sail, a ship! could it be true?Or but a phantom sent to mockMy madness on that lonely rock?Agape I stood with staring eyesAn instant, then my frantic criesWent o’er the deep, they heard, they saw,Those mariners, and from the mawOf Death my timely rescue made.My Country’s flag the good ship bore,And just as day began to fadeWe parted from that fatal shore,And long ere moonrise many a mileTo northward loomed the Demon’s Isle.Soon, homeward bound, again I trodMy native soil, and thanked my GodFor that on me he deigned to smile.Here ends my tale. And now, I pray,If I have stumbled on the way,Have shown but little tuneful skillIn this wild chant of good and ill,My faults, my frowardness forgive.Here, a sad vestal, let me live,And share with you the peaceful blissThat points a better world than this;Here shall I seek from Heaven to winForgiveness for my days of sin;Here shall my soul in prayer ascendFor him I loved; my godlike friend,My Husband! if that honored nameIs due to one who naught of blame,No falsehood, no unmanly artEre harbored in his open heart,Then truly can nor ban nor barDeny it to the lost Lamar.And if at times his spirit flits,Even here within this holy place,With mournful eyes before my face,And by my couch in silence sitsTill blooms the morn, I dare not prayThe gentle shade to haste away.
How softly have my limbs reposed!Nor stormy sea, nor haunted land,Nor sorcerer’s unhallowed wand,Disturbed the opiate shades that closedThe sleepy avenues of sense;And therefore I, without pretenceOf weariness or dream-wrought gloom,My tale of yester-eve resume.
Together o’er the mystic IsleWe wandered many a sinuous mile.’Twas midway in the month of June,And rivulets with lisping rune,And bowering trees of tender green,And flowering shrubs their trunks betweenEnticed our steps till gloaming grayUpon the pathless forest lay.Think not I journeyed void of fear;Sir Roberval’s hot maledictionLike hurtling thunder sounded near;Our steps the envious demons haunted,And peeped, or seemed to peep and leer,From rocky clefts and caverns drear.But still defiantly, undaunted,Eugene averred it had been heldBy wise philosophers of eldThat all such sights and sounds are mereFantastic tricks of eye and ear,And only meet for tales of fiction.“Heed not,” he said, “the vicious threat,’Twas but a ruffian’s empty talk,The which I pray thou may’st forgetAnd half his evil purpose baulk.”A silent doubt and grateful kissWas all I could oppose to this.But firmer grew my steps. The airWas laden with delicious balm;Rich exhalations everywhere,From pine and spruce and cedar grove,And over all a dreamy calm,An affluence of brooding love,A palpable, beneficentSufficiency of blest content.
Amid the hours, in restful pauseWe loitered on the moss-clad rocks,And listened to the sober cawsOf lonely rooks, and watched thick flocksOf pigeons passing overhead;Or where the scarlet grosbeak sped,A wingéd fire, through clumps of pineSent chasing looks of joy and wonder.Blue violets and celandine,And modest ferns that glanced from underGray-hooded boulders, seemed to say—“O, tarry, gentle folk; O, stay,For we are lonely in this wood,And sigh for human sympathyTo cheer our days of solitude.”Meek forest flowers, how dear to me!I loved them, kissed them on the stem,And felt that I must ever beSecluded from the world like them.
The long-drawn shadows, eastward cast,Admonished us that day was fastDissolving, and would soon be past;And we must needs regain the spotWhere waited good Nanette our coming.The chattering squirrel we heeded not,Nor paused to list the partridge drumming.The wedded bird was in her nest,And knew from the suspended song(A tribute to her listening ear)That from the green boughs rustling nearHad trilled and warbled all day long,A brief space only must she waitThe fondling of her chirping mate.With some wise meaning, wise and deepThat from her eyes was fain to peep,And wealth of words and lifted handsOur thoughtful servitor, Nanette,Gave kindly greeting ere we met.“Come, children, follow me,” she said,And silently the way she ledAn arpent from the ocean sands,Directly to a piny grove,Where she with wondrous skill had woveA double bower of evergreen,Meet for a fairy king and queen.—“There, tell your rosaries and takeA sabbath slumber; till you wake,Nanette, hard by, will watchful stand,With loaded arquebuse in hand,Your trusty sentinel, for hereSome prowling beast may chance appearOn no good neighbour’s lawful quest;To-morrow I can doze and rest.”—Thus, voluble, my faithful Nurse.Amazed, I stood and could not speak,But kissed her on the brow and cheek,And wept to think my Uncle’s curseShould fall on her, so worn and bent,So moved with every good intent.
A flushing joy it was to seeThat double-chambered arbour fair,Re-calling to my memoryThe storied lore of things that wereMy childhood’s moonlit witchery.Next morn we sought the circling strandAnd question made of wind and seaIf such a thing might ever be,That, soon or late, from any landSome friendly sail would come that wayAnd waft us thence: in vain, in vain!The hollow wind had nought to say,But, like a troubled ghost, passed by;—The waste illimitable mainAnd awful silence of the skyVouchsafed no sign, made no reply.—Oft times upon some lifted rockThat overhung the waves, we sateAnd listened to the undershockWhose sad persistency, like fate,Made land and sea more desolate.
Again in lighter mood we trodThe yellow sands and pale-green sodStrewn with innumerable shells,In whose pink whorls and breathing cellsBeauty and wonder slept enshrined,Like holy thoughts in a dreamer’s mind.Of these sea-waifs an ample storeWe gathered, and at twilight boreThe treasure to our sylvan home.
Once more the star encumbered domeOf heaven its thrilling story told,And Dian, lovely as of old,Poured lavishly her pallid sheenUpon that tranquil world of green;Whose cool and dewy depths, now rifeWith luminous and noiseless life,Responded wide; the fire-fly raceIn myriads lit their tiny lamps;As an army’s countless campsThe warder in some woody placeAt nightfall on his watch may trace;So gleamed and flashed those mimic lamps.
The third day came. From shore to shore,Adventurous ever more and more,Our penal Isle we wandered o’er.—Which way our roving fancy led,A wilding beauty largely spreadRewarded our ambitious feet,And made our banishment too sweetFor further censure or repining.Now culling flowers of dainty dyes,Now chasing gaudy butterflies,And now on herbaged slopes reclining,Where purple blooms of lilac trees,And sultry hum of hermit beesDisarmed the hours of weariness.—Nor can you fail, dear friends, to guessThat time for dalliance we found,—And if we loved to an excessIn many a long involved caress,O think how we were cribbed and bound.—Lush nature and necessity,As witnessed by the Saints above,In one delicious circle woveThe pulsings of our destiny.
The great rude world was far away,And like a troubled vision layOutside our thoughts; its cold deceits,The babble of its noisy streets,And all the selfish rivalryThat courts and castles propagateWere alien to our new estate.—A fragment of propitious sky,Whereon a puff of cloud might lie,Through verdured boughs o’er-arching seen,And glimpses of the sea betweenFar stretches of majestic trees,Such peaceful sanctities as theseWere our abiding joyance now.
Cheerily and with lifted browEugene led on, where tamaracs grew,And where tall elms their shadows threwAthwart a little glen whereinA virgin brook seemed glad to winThe pressure of our thirsty lips.Pleasant it was to linger thereAnd cool our fevered finger-tipsIn that pellucid stream and shareThe solace of the ocean breeze.For summer heats were now aglow,The fox sat down and took his ease,The hare moved purposeless and slow;But louder rang the blue jay’s scream,The woodpeck tapped the naked tree,Nor ceased the simple chickadeeTo twitter in the noonday beam.—My lover, wheresoe’er we strayed,Made search in every charmed nook,And angled in the winding brookFor all sweet flowers that love the shadeTo twine for me a bridal braid.Pale yellow lilies, nursed by rocksRifted and scarred by lightning shocks,Or earthquake; river buds and pinks,And modest snow-drops, pearly white,And lilies of the vale uniteTheir beauty in close-loving linksAround a scented woodbine fairTo coronate my dark brown hair.The fragile fern and clover sweetOn that enchanted circlet meet;Young roses lent their blushing hues,Nor could the cedar leaf refuseWith helmet flowers to intertwineIts glossy amplitude divine.—Emerging from that solemn wood,High on a rocky cliff we stoodAt set of sun; far, far awayThe splendors of departing dayUpon the barren ocean lay.—There on that lone sea-beaten height,Investured in a golden light,Eugene, with looks half sad, whole sweet,Upon my brow the garland set,At once a chaplet and aigrette,And said: “Be crowned, my Marguerite!My own true soul, my ever dearCompanion in this wilderness.Though hopeful still, I sometimes fearThat days of darkness and distressMay come to thee when woods are sere,—When it may baffle all my skillTo guard thee from white winter’s chill;—But hence all raven-thoughts of ill,Let me believe that Nature willRelax her rigour, having caughtThe soft infection of those eyesIn whose blue depths my image lies,Even as my soul, with love distraught,Like a lone star drowned in the sea,Is wholly drowned and lost in thee.—Love is our own essential being,Sole sovereign over utmost fate,Its own sufficient laws decreeing,Immortal and immaculate;And when this mild ethereal flameTo mortal man was kindly given’Twas surely meant by highest HeavenThat never aught of evil nameShould dare attempt to thwart its power.—Then let us, dearest, from this hourDefy the future, and pursueThe unimagined pleasure dueTo such surpassing love as ours.One moment in thy folding armsAlone in these sequestered bowers;One throb of thy impassioned heart,Now speaking audibly to mine,And saying, ‘It were death to part;’One honey-dew caress of thine,Out-sums a million rude alarms,Out-lives whole centuries that weighOn loveless souls, on sordid clay,That gravitate to ways of shame,And know love’s magic but by name.—These roseate skies will change their hue;This pomp of leaves when autumn lowersThe windy ways of earth will strew;This aromatic crown of flowers,Made sacred now since worn by you,To-morrow will begin to fade.—But love, sweet spirit, linked as ours,By sad vicissitude o’erlaid,Endures, unchanged by any breathOf adverse fate, and surely willLife’s last inevitable chillSurvive, and triumph over death.”—Thus, eloquent, the radiant youth,Like one inspired with sacred truth,Fair as Adonis, o’er me breathedThe incense of pure love, and wreathedMy heart in dewy dreams of bliss.Consenting Nature, pleased the while,Bestowed upon her outcast IsleThe magic of a mother’s smile.Spent Sol impressed his warmest kissOn ocean’s brow; the wanton windWent sighing up and down to findMeet objects for his soft embraceAll things to amity inclined;Fierce bird and beast forebore to chaseTheir feeble prey, as if they feltLove’s universal breathings meltTheir savage instincts; everywhere,Like mute enchantment in the air,This subtle permeating powerReigned sole. O, blest ambrosial hour!O, halcyon days that followed after,With music from my lute, and laughter,And song and jest, and such full measureOf secret love’s exhaustless treasureAs gave to pain the wings of pleasure!—
So fled our summer dream, as fliesAn angel through cerulean skiesOn some good errand swiftly bent,So brief its stay that ere we wist,Gruff Autumn, garmented in mist.His courier winds before him sent,The which, equipped with sleet and hail,Beat down as with an iron flailThe grandeur of the woods, and leftTheir naked solitudes bereftOf bird and flower. The trees stood starkAnd desolate against the darkChaotic sky. The mighty seaIts billows hurled upon the shoreAs if resolved to over-pourAnd gulph our prison-house. Ah, me!All roofless now, save here and thereA tall pine stretched its spear-shaped headAloft into the gelid air;The hemlock, too, its beauty spread,A tent-like pyramid of green,Symbols of hope amid a sceneWhere hope grew pale at winter’s tread.
No more, along the sounding shore,In hushed voluptuous dells, no more,Nor on the perilous rock which gaveRude welcome to the climbing wave,Might we, in amplitude of joy,Our paradisal hours employ,—From green to gray, from gray to white,So rapidly the change came on,It seemed but the work of a single nightAnd all our faery world was gone.—Down came the snow, compact, hard-drivenBy all the scourging blasts of heaven,Until, like clouds, dethroned and hurledTumultuous to this nether world,Around the desert isle it lay,A rampart to the ocean’s spray.
Half hid where friendly pine trees spreadPerpetual shelter overhead,Hugging a hillside lifted highBetwixt us and the arctic sky,Our cabin stood; a poor defenceAgainst the mute omnipotenceOf searching and insidious frost,Which, like a ghoul condemned and lost,The closeness of an inmate claimed;—But on the rustic hearthstone flamedDry wood and pine-knots resinous:A ready and abundant hoardWhen days were long our hands had storedAgainst the season perilous;And good Nanette, ’twas her desireTo feed the bickering tongues of fireThat warned the dumb intruder hence.
When night fell thick, I loved to sitAnd watch the fire-gleams fall and flitOn wooden walls and birch-bark ceiling,Among the densest shadows stealing,Till these, in folds and festoons golden,Like tapestry of castles olden,Shifted and fluttered free, revealingTo fancy’s charmed and wiser visionSuch fabrics as in looms elysianThe angels weave; and thus our hutA palace seemed; and was it notMore beautiful, illumed the whileBy dear Eugene’s adoring smile,Than many a royal chamber where,Concealed amid the gloss and glare,A thousand hateful evils are?—
Such fare as woodland wilds afford,Supplied our ever-cheerful board;Nor such alone; the salt sea waveIts tributary largess gave,All that our lenten wants might crave.
Slow crept the whitened months, so slow—I sometimes felt I never moreShould see the pretty roses blow,Or tread on aught but endless snow,And listen to the nightly roarOf tempest and the ocean flow.Weird voices, woven with the wind,Riding on darkness often cameAnd syllabled the buried nameOf Roberval, which, like a hearse,Bore inward to my palsied mindThe ghost of his inhuman curse.
Was it sick fancy, sore misled,That to my shuddering spirit said?—“Those sounds that shake the midnight air,Are threats of Shapes that will not spareYour trespass on their fief accurst.”“Hush, hush, my love,” Eugene would say,“That cry which o’er our cabin burst,Came from the owls, perched royallyAmong the pine-tops; you but heardThe language of some beast or bird;The mooing of a mother bear,An hungered in her frozen lair;The laugh and mooing of the loonThat welcometh the rising moon.The howling of the wolves you hear,In chase of some unhappy deer,Impeded in its desperate flightBy deep and thickly crusted snows,O’er which its lighter-footed foesPursue like shadows of the night.That lengthened groan, that fearful shriekWas but the grinding stress and creakOf aged trees; they seem to feelThe wrench of storms, and make appealFor mercy; in their ducts and cellsThe sap, which is their life-blood, swellsWhen frosts prevail and bursts asunderWith sharp report its prison walls;Then cease, beloved, to fear and wonderFor all these harmless peals and calls.In sweet assurance rest, love, restThy head on this devoted breast,And dream sweet dreams; the gentle springWill come anon, and birds will singAs sweetly as they sang last year;And shall I not be ever nearTo share with thee the murmuringOf waking life? the humble beeWill drone again as blissfullyAs when from flower to flower he wentAnd to the choral symphonyHis basso horn serenely lent.”—My fears were laid; I ceased to think;Athirst and eager still to drinkThe nectar of his speech.
How oft,If he but chanced to hear me sighWhen wild winds blew, or when the softAnd flaky harvest of the skyDescended silent, he would sitUnder that snow-thatched roof and tellSuch marvellous tales of mirth and wit,They held me like a wizard’s spell.Or else some poet’s plaintive verseThat breathed soft vows of youth and maiden,With love-begotten sorrow laden,In twilight tones he would rehearse;And whilst the rhythmic measure flowedFrom those attuned lips, my breastWith trepidation heaved and glowed,For in such guise was well expressedThe master-passion’s undertone,Or happy or disconsolate,Of many a lover’s wayward fateThat bore some semblance to our own.
’Twere over-much to pause and tellHow slid the weeks, and all befellEre we could to the heavens say,“The terror of your rage is past,The gnawing frost, the biting blast,And life is in the matin ray.”—The swallow came, the heron’s screamAthwart the marsh-lands, through the woods,Sped resonant; I ceased to dreamOf demons, and my waking moodsThe radiance of the morning took.Upon the bare brown leaves I stood,And saw and heard with raptured lookThe gleam and murmur of the brook,Which we in summer’s plenitudeHad traced to many an arbored nook.
’Twas midmost in the budding May,Whilst on my couch of cedar boughs,Perturbed with nameless fears I lay,And breathed to Heaven my silent vows,—A cloud-like cope of purple hueDescended o’er me, hid me quite,And seemed a soft wind round it blew,And from the mystic wind a voiceSpoke low: “Poor child of darkened light!The pure of heart are Heaven’s choice;The Virgin who hath seen thy tears,In pity for thy tender years,Will aid thee in thine utmost plight.”A hallowed tremor o’er me crept,And in that purple cloud I sleptEnshrined, how long I never knew;—And through my dreams the soft wind blewLike music heard at dusk or dawn,And when I woke and found it gone,In fullness of great joy I wept.
’Twas thus a new revealment came,A something out of nothingness,To which we gave the simple nameOf Lua. O, the first caressA mother to her first-born gives!—Methinks the angels must confess,Through all the after ages’ lives,An influence so pure and holy,That human hearts, the proud and lowly,Are touched thereby. I kissed, and kissedMy pretty babe, and through the mistOf happy tears upon it gazedIn silent thankfulness, and praisedThe Empress of the skies, whose graceHad glorified that humble place.
The sandy marge again we trodRound the green Isle, and felt that GodWas very near,—in ocean’s roar,And in the zephyr’s scented breath,In summer green, in winter hoar,In joy, in grief, in life, in death,Our Friend and Father evermore.
Again across the naked sea,—In tumult or in blank repose,At morn and noon, and evening close,—Sick yearnings from our souls were sent.But bootless still the hungry sigh,A southward sail still southward went,If any such we might descry,—As twice or thrice it chanced to be,We saw or fancied shimmering,Like a white eagle’s outstretched wing,Hiding the strait and dubious spaceThat separates the lifted faceOf ocean from the stooping sky.The sail would melt, the hollow domeAbove us and our prison home,And girdling waves, and sobbing rain,And winds full-fledged,—all things that wereOf earth and sky, of sea and air,Strangled sweet Hope, and in the pitOf outer darkness buried it.Yet seemed it sinful to complain,When to our feast of love was givenThe fairest fruit that gracious HeavenHad e’er for human joyance shed.Sweet Innocence! the small hands spread,Dimpled and white, catching at thingsViewless to us, but clearly seenBy those wide-open eyes; the wingsOf heavenly guests it must have beenFluttering near the sinless child,Azure and golden, till she smiledAnd shrank from their excessive sheen.
Again the forest’s green arcadesGladly we paced; their sun-lit shadesInvestured us; the laughing brookThat solaced us the year before,Mirrored again my lingering look;In that clear glass I could not failTo see my face grown somewhat pale,But not less fair; we trod once moreThe lofty cliff whereon EugeneHad crowned me his bride and queen.Pleasant those summer days to walkWhere no intrusive step could baulkOur happiness; no tongue to dareWhisper disparagement, and bareThe mysteries of Love’s free-will,Approved of Heaven to strive for still,The liberty that angels share.—Another summer’s beauty dead,Another winter’s cerements woundOn tree and shrub; the sheeted ground,The cruel storm-land overhead,The scream of frightened birds, the windThat in its teeth the tree-tops tookAnd worried all day long and shook,These and the monstrous ocean blindWith foamy wrath, were ours once more;—Once more within our cabin mewedUnder the pine-tops, crisp and hoar,My fears their old alarms pursued.
Four times the moon had waxed and wanedSince summer blooms, so bright and brief,Were mourned for by the falling leaf,And winter winds were all unchained,When came the direful, fatal day.The Spectre of the wide world cameIn league with winter’s fierce array,In league with fiends that hissed the nameOf Death around the ruined Isle.
Deep lay the snow, pile heaped on pile,When food fell scant, and on a morn,Ere yet the infant light was born,Eager-thus always to provide,Eugene forsook my drowsy side,And lavished on my happy lipsHis silent love; then gently slips,Upon the little callow heapThat lay embalmed in downy sleepHis softest kisses: happy child!She made a little stir and smiled,As if in soothest dreams she knewWhence came that quiet fond adieu.Then pausing at the windy door,His arquebuse on shoulder laid,And in his belt a shining blade,His brow a troubled shadow wore;—Or was it but my own blurred thoughtA semblance of foreboding wrought?Backward he moved, a tardy pace,And toward me turned his comely faceAnd said: “Dear love, I thought to goEre thou shouldst wake, for well I knowThese frequent partings, though but brief,Aye touch thy tender heart with grief.”“Loud blows the nor-wind,” I replied.“Surely thou needst not haste awayBefore the leaden eyes of DayOn our small world are opened wide;For all these partings, my Eugene,Are bitter drops that fall betweenOur honied draughts of happiness;Ah! well I know what dangerous toil,What weary hours companionless,Are thine in quest of needful spoil,Be-wrenched, from stubborn wood and wave,Wherein—Oh God!—an early graveMay compass thee; and I remainA wretched mourner, doomed to bearThe burning curse and bitter baneBequeathed me by Sir Roberval;—O stay, Eugene, stay yet awhile!Just now I dreamt I saw thee borneBy Shapes unshapely, stark and shorn,Three times around the darkened Isle;Then did the heavens o’er thee bend,And in a cloud thou didst ascend,Lost to the world and me forever.”“Twas but a dream,” he said, “no more,”But saying which, a painful quiverHis lips betrayed, then cheerily boreHis manly head, and thus made end.
“No evil can such dreams portend:—Nor need I, dearest, say farewell;For love and faith cannot deceive,And hence I cannot but believe,What holy whispers round me tell,That though thou tarriest here behind,Thy spirit journeyeth with me,Clasping me round whereso I be,A shelter from the bruising wind,A covert from the drenching sea.Then rest, my own brave Marguerite,Rest thee in trust; ’tis meet that IThe savage elements defyFor thy loved sake, and for the sweet,Sweet sake of her who slumbers there,Pillowed upon her golden hair,Her beauty, love, so like thine own;—Sweet babe! dear wife!” Ere I could speakHe kissed the tear-drop from my cheek,And ere I wist I was alone,The door stood wide, and he had passedInto the dusky void, and vastUncertainties concealed by Fate.Ah, me! I could but watch and wait
For his return. For his return?I felt my heart within me burn,Then sicken to an icy dread,For seemed a sad voice near me said,“Thou ne’er shall see his face again!”The paragon of noblest men!It could not be; I would not ownA prophecy that turned to stoneAll joys that I had ever known.
The wind increased, the day wore on,And ere the hour was half-way goneThat follows noon, a storm of snowBlinded the heavens, and denser grew,And fiercer still the fierce wind blewAs night approached, a night of woe,Such as no fiend might add thereto.
The double darkness walled us in,The blackness of the storm and night,And still he came not! O, what sin,What blasphemy against the lightOf Heaven had my soul committed?Never before had eventideOnce found him absent from my side.Eugene came not! deceived, outwitted,Sore tempest-tossed and lured astray.By demons, when the night-owl flittedAcross his face at close of day,Groping for home, exhausted, faint,No angel near, no pitying saintTo aid his steps and point the way.
From ebb of day till noon of night,And onward till return of light,The signal horn, Nanette and I,Alternate blew, but for replyThe wind’s unprecedented roar,And ocean thundering round the shoreOur labor mocked; and other sounds,Nor of the land, nor sea, nor sky,Our ears profaned; the unleashed houndsOf spleenful hell were all abroad,And round our snow-bound cabin trod,And stormed on clashing wings aloof,And stamped upon the yielding roof,And all our lamentation jeered.
Down the wide chimney-gorge they peeredWith great green eye-balls fringed with flame;—The holy cross I kissed and reared,And in sweet Mary’s blessed name,Who erst had buoyed my sinking heart,Conjured the foul-faced fiends depart.Their shriekings made a storm more loudThan that before whose fury bowedThe hundred-ringéd oaken trees;More fearful, more appalling theseThan thunder from the thunder-cloud;But trembling at the sacred sign,And mention of the Name divine,They dared not, could not disobey,But fled in baffled rage away.—
The morrow came, and still the morrow,But neither time, nor pain, nor sorrow,Nor any evil thing could makeMy stricken soul advisement takeOf aught that in the world of senseThe fiat of OmnipotenceMight choose prescribe; I only knowThat fever came, whose fiery flowSurged through the temple-gates of thought,Till merciful delirium wroughtRelease from knowledge, from a worldWhere Death’s black banner stood unfurled.—
Restored—condemned—to conscious life,The parting hour, the storm, the strife,Rose from their tombs and dimly passed,But on my spirit only castA feeble shade. When known the worst,When every joy that love has nursedLies cold and dead, a sullen calmSheds on the bleeding heart a balmThat is not peace, and does not heal,But makes it half content to feelThe frost upon the withered leaf,To see love’s lifeboat rock and reelAnd founder on the stormy reef.
A languid stupor, chill and gray,Upon my listless being lay—I knew and felt Eugene was not;—I saw that in the osier cot,Constructed by his cunning skill,My babe lay sleeping, very still:So very still and pale was she,That when I questioned, quietly,How long since she had fallen asleep,Nanette could only moan and weep,And rock her body to and fro.—With cautious step, and stooping low,I took the little dimpled handIn mine, and felt the waxen brow.O, Queen of Heaven! clearly now,’Twas given me to understandThat all the warmth of life had fled;My babe, my pretty babe, was dead!—In stupefaction fixed I stoodSmitten afresh; a wailing cry,The wounded love of motherhood,Rose from my heart; mine eyes were dryDenied the blessed drops that giveA little ease, that we may live—Live on, to feel with every breathThat life is but the mask of death.
Regardful of my frozen gaze,Hard set upon the frozen face,Nanette, at length, in halting phrase,Her painful pass essayed to trace:Told how, when hot the fever ranAlong my veins, and when the wanAnd wasted moonshine fringed the hearth,And voices that were not of earthCame through the gloom, the famished child,With pouting lips and eyelids mild,Her wonted nourishment did crave;And how, O God forgive! she gaveThe little mouth its wish. She toldHow dismal were the nights and cold,Her haunted hours of rest how few,And how my precious darling drewFrom the distempered fevered fountThe malady that raged in me.How long it was, the tangled count,One week or two, or maybe three—Her head astray, she could not tell,When rang, she said, a silvery bell,A-tolling softly far away.So softly tolling, faint and far,When quiet as the morning star,That cannot brook the glare of day,And seeks the upper azure deep,My Lua (pardon if I weep),Pure nestling of this sinful breast,Had struggled into gracious rest.
Unhappy nurse! that hallowed knellWhich on her pious fancy fellThrough midnight dreams was solace meetFor one whose slow, uncertain feetTheir journey’s end had well-nigh gained;Whose meagre face drooped, pinched and pained,From ague-fits that lately shookAll gladness from its kindly look.No longer in those furrows playedThe gleams of mirth that erst had madeHer gossip by the cabin fire,A pleasing hum; for she had storeOf gruesome tales and faery lore,Which suited with the elfin quireOf winds that on the waste of night.Their voices spent; ’twas her delight,In calmer hours, her voice to strainWith lays of roving TroubadourThat from her girlhood’s bloom had lainMid memory’s tuneful cords secure.How changed she was! soon, soon I feltMy pity for her dolour melt.My friend and sole companion now,—I brushed the gray hairs from her browAnd kissed it; then came back to meThe days when on that palsied kneeI perched, a happy child; where lateMy babe, my second self had sate:—Strange orbiting of time and fate.Hid in the upheaved scarp of rockThat screened our hut from winter’s shockA cave there was of spacious bound,Wherein no wave of human soundHad ever rolled; imprisoned there,Like a grey penitent at prayer,Hoar Silence wept, and from the tearsEmbroidered hangings, fold on fold,And silver tassels tinct with goldThe fingering of the voiceless yearsHad deftly wrought, and on the wallsIn sumptuous breadth of foamy fallsThe product of their genius hung.From floor to ceiling, arched and high—A counterfeited cloudy sky,—Smooth alabaster pillars sprung.On either side might one espyWhat seemed hushed oratories rareInviting sinful knees to prayer.
Into that chapel-like retreat,Untrod before by human feet,The wicker cot, wherein still layMy Lua’s uncorrupted clayWe bore, and in an alcove’s shadeOur tear-dewed burthen softly laid.Long muffled in my heavy woe,I knelt beside the little bedAnd many a tearful Ave said.At length, at length, I rose to go,But kneeling still, my poor Nanette,Her crucifix and beads of jetClasped in her praying hands, stirred not,Nor spoke;—our flickering lampThrough the sepulchral gloom and dampMade sickly twilight round the cot.Orbed in her upturned hollow eyesTwo tear-drops gleamed. I said, “Arise!Come, come away. Good sister, come!”Still motionless as death and dumb,—I shook her gently, spoke again,When sudden horror and affrightLaid hold upon my reeling brain;Her soul, unshrived, had winged its flight!—I sank upon the clammy stone,The lamp died out and all was night.“Mother of God! alone! alone!”I cried in agonized despair,“O pity me! O Mary spare!A mother’s anguish hast thou known,O pity me! alone! alone!”A thousand startled echoes sprangForth from their stony crypts, and rangA ghostly miserere roundThe cavern’s dread Cimmerian bound,Till sinking to a dying moanThey answered back, “alone! alone!”
“Nay, not alone, poor Marguerite!”I heard a voice divinely sweet,And in a moment’s awful spaceThat silent subterranean placeWas filled with light;—I did not dream:In beauty and in love supreme,Before me shone our Lady’s face.(O would I could behold it now)The coronal upon her brow,With star-like jewels thickly set,The Sovereign presence certified.Pure as the snow that lingered yetOn solemn heights, with sunrise dyed,Her raiment gleamed. “Weep not,” she said,And toward me stretched her sacred handsAs if to raise my drooping head;“Be comforted! the triple bandsOf grief and painWhich Death around thy heart has coiledShall part in twain;If secret sin thy soul hath soiled,If thou thy lover loved too well,The Seraphs say in high debate,‘Better excessive love than hate,Save hate of hell.’If fiends infest this desert IsleRegard them not; the soul whose trustOn Heaven leans, may calmly smileAt Satan’s utmost stretch of guileAnd tread down evil things like dust.The working of the wicked curseBranded upon thyself and nurseShall cease with dawn of hallowed days;She fitting sepulture hath foundUnder and yet not under ground;Here leave her kneeling by the child,Here, where the power thy God displaysShall keep their bodies undefiled,Shall change to marble, flesh and bone.Then come, and leave the dead alone;Come hence!—thy round of days complete,Thy babe and lover shalt thou meetIn Paradise.Look up, arise!My hands will guide thy fainting feet.”She led me to the outer light,And ere a second breath I drew,Ere I could fix my dazzled view,She vanished from my misted sight.
Resigned, uplifted, forth I went,But, oh! ’tis hard to nurse contentIn silent walls; to ever meetWith filling eyes the vacant seat;To tread from day to day aloneThe silent ways, familiar grown,Where dear companionship has shedA glory and a rapture fled;Where every hillock, tree and stoneAre memories of a loved one, dead!
Again the flowering springtime came,The wedding-time of happy birds,But not, oh! not for me the same;To whom could I address fond words?The violet and maple leaf,Had they but known my wintry grief,They would not have appeared so soon.I could not bear to look uponThe beauty of the kindling dawn,Nor sunset, nor the rising moon,Nor listen to the wooing notesThat warbled from a thousand throats,From cool of morn till heat of noon.My soul was with the wind that sighedAmong the tree-tops; all the wideWaste desolation of the seaPossessed me; I could not agreeWith aught of earth or firmament.Where could I go? which way I wentHis melancholy shade did glideBehind the rocks, among the trees,And whispered in the twilight breezeEndearments whispered long ago.In constancy of love and fearMy sick heart bore his heavy bier,How lovingly the angels know.
I knew not of my lost love’s tomb,Whether amid the shrouding gloomOf some tenebrous yawning chasm,Or in the watery world’s abysm,He met those spectres of my dream;No trace, no sign, no faintest gleamDid all my questing ever show.’Twas well, perchance, that this was so;But may I not believe that yet,Long after we again have met,I shall know all? shall hear him tellWhat on that dreadful night befell,And how when in the toils of deathHe called me with his latest breathAnd blessed me? It will magnifyThe joys of that dear home on highIf memory keep our bygone woe,Our grievings of this world below.
A huntress of the woods I grew,Necessity my frailty taughtTo track the fleetest quarry throughThe forest, wet with morning dew,Unheedful of the bruises wroughtOn tender feet; the wounds receivedFrom thorns whose leafy garb deceivedMy glowing limbs. My loosened hairI freely gave to every wind,Content to feel it stream behind,Or drift across my bosom bare.
So passed the uneventful days,The sad monotony of weeks,Till August suns had ceased to blaze;Till o’er the forest’s hectic cheeksA languishing and slumbering haze,The mellow Indian Summer crept;It was as if chaste Dryads weptAt sign of Winter’s coming tread,Till from their falling tears was spreadThose exhalations o’er the woodsAmid whose greenest solitudesTheir festivals of joy they kept.
So came the Autumn’s ruddy prime,And all my hopes, which had no morrow,Like sea-weed cast upon the beach,Like drift-wood barely out of reachOf waves that were attuned to sorrow,Lay lifeless on the strand of time.
So ebbed my life till beamed the hourWhen burst in sudden bloom the flowerOf merciful deliverance.That day I walked as in a trance,My dismal round, as was my wont,To many a joy forsaken hauntWhere oft upon my lover’s breastMy head had lain in blissful rest,Till coming to that sea-beat heightWhere erst, enrobed in golden light,His hands, aglow with love, conferredUpon my brow the spousal wreath,Whilst heaven and all things underneathHis words of sweet adorement heard.There failed my limbs, and long I sateAt one with thoughts grown desperate.Two winters had I known since firstI stood upon that Isle accurst,The third a near, and how could IIts killing frosts and snows defy?Surely ’twere better now to die.So ran my thoughts, and fair in sightThe breakers tossed their plumes of white,The same as on that fearful dayWhen bravely through their blinding sprayMy menaced lover fought his way.I listened to their luring speechTill lost in lornest fantasy;Till toward me they did seem to reachWhite jewelled hands to join with mine.I rose and answered: “I am thine,Thou desolate and widowed Sea,That late hath come to pity me.My lost Eugene! ’neath yonder waveOh should thy faithful MargueriteThy lonely corse in darkness meetHow calm, how blest will be my grave!Sweet babe, adieu! and thou, Nanette,With tearful eyes on Heaven set,Thy watch beside my Lua keep.”Forward I stepped, prepared to leap;—One loving thought, one hasty glanceSent o’er the deep to sunny France,When hove directly into viewA sail, a ship! could it be true?Or but a phantom sent to mockMy madness on that lonely rock?Agape I stood with staring eyesAn instant, then my frantic criesWent o’er the deep, they heard, they saw,Those mariners, and from the mawOf Death my timely rescue made.My Country’s flag the good ship bore,And just as day began to fadeWe parted from that fatal shore,And long ere moonrise many a mileTo northward loomed the Demon’s Isle.Soon, homeward bound, again I trodMy native soil, and thanked my GodFor that on me he deigned to smile.
Here ends my tale. And now, I pray,If I have stumbled on the way,Have shown but little tuneful skillIn this wild chant of good and ill,My faults, my frowardness forgive.Here, a sad vestal, let me live,And share with you the peaceful blissThat points a better world than this;Here shall I seek from Heaven to winForgiveness for my days of sin;Here shall my soul in prayer ascendFor him I loved; my godlike friend,My Husband! if that honored nameIs due to one who naught of blame,No falsehood, no unmanly artEre harbored in his open heart,Then truly can nor ban nor barDeny it to the lost Lamar.And if at times his spirit flits,Even here within this holy place,With mournful eyes before my face,And by my couch in silence sitsTill blooms the morn, I dare not prayThe gentle shade to haste away.