Volume 19 / Part 2 — Part II.

She Sang.

I.

I heard his voice, and I was dumb

Because to his my spirit cleaved:

He called to me from far. I come.

Because I loved him, I believed.

He said, “Though love be secret yet,

Eternity its truth shall prove.”

It seemed not gift, but ancient debt

Discharged, to answer love with love.

II.

Thy herald near me drew and knelt:

I knew from whom the missive came

Ere yet I saw, ere yet I felt

Thy sigil-mark, or kissed thy name.

I read—'twas like a thousand birds,

Music confused of Paradise:

At last the words became thy words;

Thy voice was in them, and thine eyes

Above them shone in love and power,

And flashed the meaning on the whole:

We were not severed, friend, that hour:

One day shall blend us, soul with soul.

[pg 304]

III.

That face is valorous and grave:

To it, despite thine unripe spring,

Thy spirit's might the painter gave:

It is the countenance of a king.

Look down, strong countenance, strong yet fair,

Through all this weak, unstable soul!

Like stars sea-mirrored, kindle there

His virtues—truth and self-control!

Not beauty, nor that youthful grace

Uncareful girlhood's natural dower,

Suffice. A child of royal race,

A hero's wife should walk in power.

IV.

Like some great altar rises vast

That rock whereon our City stands,

With gray woods girt; with shade far cast

At morn dividing distant lands.

Nor war she fears, nor summer drouth,

By runnels pierced whose sparkling tide

Is drawn from mountains of the South

O'er myriad arches far descried.

Around her cliff-like, stony zone,

From tower to tower, from gate to gate,

At eve, when sunset changes stone

To gold, her princes walk in state;

And priests entoning anthems sweet,

The people's strength; and maiden choirs

That, passing, make them reverence meet;

And orphaned babes, and gray-haired sires.

High up, with many a cloistered lawn,

And chapelled gallery widely spread,

Extends, flower-dressed at eve and dawn,

The happy “City of the Dead.”

[pg 305]

There musing sit I, day by day;

I sing my psalm; I pray for thee:

“If men could love, not hate,” I say,

“How like to heaven this earth would be!”

V.

Love bound a veil above my brow;

He wrapt it round me, o'er and o'er;

He said, “My little nun art thou,

My solitary evermore.

“Where hid'st thou when the falcons fly;

The flung jereed in music shrills?

When sweep the Arab horsemen by

In valleys of the terraced hills?

“Where are thy childhood's blithesome ways?

The tales, the dances, and the sports?

The bards that sang thy beauty's praise

Amid the hundred-columned courts?”

Love took from me all gifts save one:

The veil that shrouds me is his gift:

Love! say to him I love, “Alone

That veil of severance thou canst lift.”

VI.

On crimson silk, 'mid leaf and flower

I traced thy name in golden thread;

A harper harped beneath my bower:

I rose, and brought him wine and bread.

He sang: methought he sang of thee!

“My prince!” I cried—“how knew'st him thou?

His victories in the days to be?

His heaven-like eyes, and king-like brow?”

“O maid! I have not seen thy prince:

Old wars I sang; old victories won

In my far-distant land long since;

I sang the birth of moon and sun.”

[pg 306]

VII.

He culled me grapes—the vintager;

In turn, for song the old man prayed:

I glanced around; but none was near:

With veil drawn tighter, I obeyed.

“Were I a vine, and he were heaven,”

I sang, “I'd spread a vernal leaf

To meet the beams of morn and even,

And think the April day too brief.

“Were he I love a cloud, not heaven,

I'd spread my leaf and drink the rain;

Warm summer shower, and dews of even

Alike I'd take, and think them gain.”

“I would not shrink from wintry rime

Or echoes of the thunder-shock,

But watch the advancing vintage-time,

And meet it, reddening on my rock.”

VIII.

I often say, now thou art gone,

“How hard I seemed when he was here!”

I feared to seem too quickly won:

Love also came at first with fear.

I sang me dear old songs which proved

That many a maid had loved ere I:

No secret knew I till I loved:

I loved, yet loved reluctantly.

My heart with zeal more generous glowed

When he I loved was Danger's mate.

Great Love in this his greatness showed—

He lifted thee to things more great.

IX.

My childhood was a cloistered thing:

No wish for human love was mine:

I heard the hooded vestals sing

The praises of their Love Divine.

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The village maids with rival glee,

Flower-filleting their unclipt hair,

Sang thus, “The meadow flowers are we”:

I thought the convent flowers more fair.

Yet false I am not. Still I climb

Through love to realms this earth above:

And those whom most I loved that time

Only for love's sake fled from love.

X.

Dear tasks are mine that make the weeks

Too swift in passing, not too slow:

I nurse the rose on faded cheeks,

Bring solace to the homes of woe.

I hear the Vesper anthems swell;

I track the steps of Fast and Feast

I read old legends treasured well

Of Machabean chief or priest.

I hear, on heights of song and psalm,

The storm of God careering by:

Beside His Deep, for ever calm,

I kneel in caves of Prophecy.

O Eastern Book! It cannot change!

Of books beside, the type, the mould—

It stands like yon Carmelian range

By our Elias trod of old!

[pg 308]