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The ABBESS IRMINGARD sitting with ELSIE in the moonlight.
IRMINGARD. THE NIGHT is silent, the wind is still, | |
| The moon is looking from yonder hill | |
| Down upon convent, and grove, and garden; | |
| The clouds have passed away from her face, | |
| Leaving behind them no sorrowful trace, | 5 |
| Only the tender and quiet grace | |
| Of one whose heart has been healed with pardon! | |
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| And such am I. My soul within | |
| Was dark with passion and soiled with sin. | |
| But now its wounds are healed again; | 10 |
| Gone are the anguish, the terror, and pain; | |
| For across that desolate land of woe, | |
| O’er whose burning sands I was forced to go, | |
| A wind from heaven began to blow; | |
| And all my being trembled and shook, | 15 |
| As the leaves of the tree, or the grass of the field, | |
| And I was healed, as the sick are healed, | |
| When fanned by the leaves of the Holy Book! | |
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| As thou sittest in the moonlight there, | |
| Its glory flooding thy golden hair, | 20 |
| And the only darkness that which lies | |
| In the haunted chambers of thine eyes, | |
| I feel my soul drawn unto thee, | |
| Strangely, and strongly, and more and more, | |
| As to one I have known and loved before; | 25 |
| For every soul is akin to me | |
| That dwells in the land of mystery! | |
| I am the Lady Irmingard, | |
| Born of a noble race and name! | |
| Many a wandering Suabian bard, | 30 |
| Whose life was dreary, and bleak, and hard, | |
| Has found through me the way to fame. | |
| Brief and bright were those days, and the night | |
| Which followed was full of a lurid light. | |
| Love, that of every woman’s heart | 35 |
| Will have the whole, and not a part, | |
| That is to her, in Nature’s plan, | |
| More than ambition is to man, | |
| Her light, her life, her very breath, | |
| With no alternative but death, | 40 |
| Found me a maiden soft and young, | |
| Just from the convent’s cloistered school, | |
| And seated on my lowly stool, | |
| Attentive while the minstrels sung. | |
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| Gallant, graceful, gentle, tall, | 45 |
| Fairest, noblest, best of all, | |
| Was Walter of the Vogelweid; | |
| And, whatsoever may betide, | |
| Still I think of him with pride! | |
| His song was of the summer-time, | 50 |
| The very birds sang in his rhyme; | |
| The sunshine, the delicious air, | |
| The fragrance of the flowers, were there; | |
| And I grew restless as I heard, | |
| Restless and buoyant as a bird, | 55 |
| Down soft, aerial currents sailing, | |
| O’er blossomed orchards, and fields in bloom, | |
| And through the momentary gloom | |
| Of shadows o’er the landscape trailing, | |
| Yielding and borne I knew not where, | 60 |
| But feeling resistance unavailing. | |
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| And thus, unnoticed and apart, | |
| And more by accident than choice, | |
| I listened to that single voice | |
| Until the chambers of my heart | 65 |
| Were filled with it by night and day. | |
| One night,—it was a night in May,— | |
| Within the garden, unawares, | |
| Under the blossoms in the gloom, | |
| I heard it utter my own name | 70 |
| With protestations and wild prayers; | |
| And it rang through me, and became | |
| Like the archangel’s trump of doom, | |
| Which the soul hears, and must obey; | |
| And mine arose as from a tomb. | 75 |
| My former life now seemed to me | |
| Such as hereafter death may be, | |
| When in the great Eternity | |
| We shall awake and find it day. | |
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| It was a dream, and would not stay; | 80 |
| A dream, that in a single night | |
| Faded and vanished out of sight. | |
| My father’s anger followed fast | |
| This passion, as a freshening blast | |
| Seeks out and fans the fire, whose rage | 85 |
| It may increase, but not assuage. | |
| And he exclaimed: “No wandering bard | |
| Shall win thy hand, O Irmingard! | |
| For which Prince Henry of Hoheneck | |
| By messenger and letter sues.” | 90 |
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| Gently, but firmly, I replied: | |
| “Henry of Hoheneck I discard! | |
| Never the hand of Irmingard | |
| Shall lie in his as the hand of a bride!” | |
| This said I, Walter, for thy sake; | 95 |
| This said I, for I could not choose. | |
| After a pause, my father spake | |
| In that cold and deliberate tone | |
| Which turns the hearer into stone, | |
| And seems itself the act to be | 100 |
| That follows with such dread certainty: | |
| “This or the cloister and the veil!” | |
| No other words than these he said, | |
| But they were like a funeral wail; | |
| My life was ended, my heart was dead. | 105 |
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| That night from the castle-gate went down, | |
| With silent, slow, and stealthy pace, | |
| Two shadows, mounted on shadowy steeds, | |
| Taking the narrow path that leads | |
| Into the forest dense and brown. | 110 |
| In the leafy darkness of the place, | |
| One could not distinguish form nor face, | |
| Only a bulk without a shape, | |
| A darker shadow in the shade; | |
| One scarce could say it moved or stayed. | 115 |
| Thus it was we made our escape! | |
| A foaming brook, with many a bound, | |
| Followed us like a playful hound; | |
| Then leaped before us, and in the hollow | |
| Paused, and waited for us to follow, | 120 |
| And seemed impatient, and afraid | |
| That our tardy flight should be betrayed | |
| By the sound our horses’ hoof-beats made. | |
| And when we reached the plain below, | |
| We paused a moment and drew rein | 125 |
| To look back at the castle again; | |
| And we saw the windows all aglow | |
| With lights, that were passing to and fro; | |
| Our hearts with terror ceased to beat; | |
| The brook crept silent to our feet; | 130 |
| We knew what most we feared to know. | |
| Then suddenly horns began to blow; | |
| And we heard a shout, and a heavy tramp, | |
| And our horses snorted in the damp | |
| Night-air of the meadows green and wide, | 135 |
| And in a moment, side by side, | |
| So close, they must have seemed but one, | |
| The shadows across the moonlight run, | |
| And another came, and swept behind, | |
| Like the shadow of clouds before the wind! | 140 |
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| How I remember that breathless flight | |
| Across the moors, in the summer night! | |
| How under our feet the long, white road | |
| Backward like a river flowed, | |
| Sweeping with it fences and hedges, | 145 |
| Whilst farther away and overhead, | |
| Paler than I, with fear and dread, | |
| The moon fled with us as we fled | |
| Along the forest’s jagged edges! | |
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| All this I can remember well; | 150 |
| But of what afterwards befell | |
| I nothing further can recall | |
| Than a blind, desperate, headlong fall; | |
| The rest is a blank and darkness all. | |
| When I awoke out of this swoon, | 155 |
| The sun was shining, not the moon, | |
| Making a cross upon the wall | |
| With the bars of my windows narrow and tall; | |
| And I prayed to it, as I had been wont to pray, | |
| From early childhood, day by day, | 160 |
| Each morning, as in bed I lay! | |
| I was lying again in my own room! | |
| And I thanked God, in my fever and pain, | |
| That those shadows on the midnight plain | |
| Were gone, and could not come again! | 165 |
| I struggled no longer with my doom! | |
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| This happened many years ago. | |
| I left my father’s home to come | |
| Like Catherine to her martyrdom, | |
| For blindly I esteemed it so. | 170 |
| And when I heard the convent door | |
| Behind me close, to ope no more, | |
| I felt it smite me like a blow. | |
| Through all my limbs a shudder ran, | |
| And on my bruisèd spirit fell | 175 |
| The dampness of my narrow cell | |
| As night-air on a wounded man, | |
| Giving intolerable pain. | |
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| But now a better life began. | |
| I felt the agony decrease | 180 |
| By slow degrees, then wholly cease, | |
| Ending in perfect rest and peace! | |
| It was not apathy, nor dulness, | |
| That weighed and pressed upon my brain, | |
| But the same passion I had given | 185 |
| To earth before, now turned to heaven | |
| With all its overflowing fulness. | |
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| Alas! the world is full of peril! | |
| The path that runs through the fairest meads, | |
| On the sunniest side of the valley, leads | 190 |
| Into a region bleak and sterile! | |
| Alike in the high-born and the lowly, | |
| The will is feeble, and passion strong. | |
| We cannot sever right from wrong; | |
| Some falsehood mingles with all truth; | 195 |
| Nor is it strange the heart of youth | |
| Should waver and comprehend but slowly | |
| The things that are holy and unholy! | |
| But in this sacred, calm retreat, | |
| We are all well and safely shielded | 200 |
| From winds that blow, and waves that beat, | |
| From the cold, and rain, and blighting heat, | |
| To which the strongest hearts have yielded. | |
| Here we stand as the Virgins Seven, | |
| For our celestial bridegroom yearning; | 205 |
| Our hearts are lamps forever burning, | |
| With a steady and unwavering flame, | |
| Pointing upward, forever the same, | |
| Steadily upward toward the heaven! | |
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| The moon is hidden behind a cloud; | 210 |
| A sudden darkness fills the room, | |
| And thy deep eyes, amid the gloom, | |
| Shine like jewels in a shroud. | |
| On the leaves is a sound of falling rain; | |
| A bird, awakened in its nest, | 215 |
| Gives a faint twitter of unrest, | |
| Then smooths its plumes and sleeps again. | |
| No other sounds than these I hear; | |
| The hour of midnight must be near. | |
| Thou art o’erspent with the day’s fatigue | 220 |
| Of riding many a dusty league; | |
| Sink, then, gently to thy slumber; | |
| Me so many cares encumber, | |
| So many ghosts, and forms of fright, | |
| Have started from their graves to-night, | 225 |
| They have driven sleep from mine eyes away: | |
| I will go down to the chapel and pray. | |
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