Read Ebook: Marguerite; or The Isle of Demons and Other Poems by Martin George

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Ebook has 551 lines and 62890 words, and 12 pages

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 hand In mine, and felt the waxen brow. O, Queen of Heaven! clearly now, 'Twas given me to understand That all the warmth of life had fled; My babe, my pretty babe, was dead!-- In stupefaction fixed I stood Smitten afresh; a wailing cry, The wounded love of motherhood, Rose from my heart; mine eyes were dry Denied the blessed drops that give A little ease, that we may live-- Live on, to feel with every breath That 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 ran Along my veins, and when the wan And wasted moonshine fringed the hearth, And voices that were not of earth Came through the gloom, the famished child, With pouting lips and eyelids mild, Her wonted nourishment did crave; And how, O God forgive! she gave The little mouth its wish. She told How dismal were the nights and cold, Her haunted hours of rest how few, And how my precious darling drew From the distempered fevered fount The 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 , Pure nestling of this sinful breast, Had struggled into gracious rest.

Unhappy nurse! that hallowed knell Which on her pious fancy fell Through midnight dreams was solace meet For one whose slow, uncertain feet Their journey's end had well-nigh gained; Whose meagre face drooped, pinched and pained, From ague-fits that lately shook All gladness from its kindly look. No longer in those furrows played The gleams of mirth that erst had made Her gossip by the cabin fire, A pleasing hum; for she had store Of gruesome tales and faery lore, Which suited with the elfin quire Of winds that on the waste of night. Their voices spent; 'twas her delight, In calmer hours, her voice to strain With lays of roving Troubadour That from her girlhood's bloom had lain Mid memory's tuneful cords secure. How changed she was! soon, soon I felt My pity for her dolour melt. My friend and sole companion now,-- I brushed the gray hairs from her brow And kissed it; then came back to me The days when on that palsied knee I perched, a happy child; where late My babe, my second self had sate:-- Strange orbiting of time and fate. Hid in the upheaved scarp of rock That screened our hut from winter's shock A cave there was of spacious bound, Wherein no wave of human sound Had ever rolled; imprisoned there, Like a grey penitent at prayer, Hoar Silence wept, and from the tears Embroidered hangings, fold on fold, And silver tassels tinct with gold The fingering of the voiceless years Had deftly wrought, and on the walls In sumptuous breadth of foamy falls The 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 espy What seemed hushed oratories rare Inviting sinful knees to prayer.

Into that chapel-like retreat, Untrod before by human feet, The wicker cot, wherein still lay My Lua's uncorrupted clay We bore, and in an alcove's shade Our tear-dewed burthen softly laid. Long muffled in my heavy woe, I knelt beside the little bed And many a tearful Ave said. At length, at length, I rose to go, But kneeling still, my poor Nanette, Her crucifix and beads of jet Clasped in her praying hands, stirred not, Nor spoke;--our flickering lamp Through the sepulchral gloom and damp Made sickly twilight round the cot. Orbed in her upturned hollow eyes Two 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 affright Laid 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 sprang Forth from their stony crypts, and rang A ghostly miserere round The cavern's dread Cimmerian bound, Till sinking to a dying moan They answered back, "alone! alone!"

"Nay, not alone, poor Marguerite!" I heard a voice divinely sweet, And in a moment's awful space That silent subterranean place Was filled with light;--I did not dream: In beauty and in love supreme, Before me shone our Lady's face. The coronal upon her brow, With star-like jewels thickly set, The Sovereign presence certified. Pure as the snow that lingered yet On solemn heights, with sunrise dyed, Her raiment gleamed. "Weep not," she said, And toward me stretched her sacred hands As if to raise my drooping head; "Be comforted! the triple bands Of grief and pain Which Death around thy heart has coiled Shall 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 Isle Regard them not; the soul whose trust On Heaven leans, may calmly smile At Satan's utmost stretch of guile And tread down evil things like dust. The working of the wicked curse Branded upon thyself and nurse Shall cease with dawn of hallowed days; She fitting sepulture hath found Under and yet not under ground; Here leave her kneeling by the child, Here, where the power thy God displays Shall 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 meet In 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 content In silent walls; to ever meet With filling eyes the vacant seat; To tread from day to day alone The silent ways, familiar grown, Where dear companionship has shed A glory and a rapture fled; Where every hillock, tree and stone Are 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 upon The beauty of the kindling dawn, Nor sunset, nor the rising moon, Nor listen to the wooing notes That warbled from a thousand throats, From cool of morn till heat of noon. My soul was with the wind that sighed Among the tree-tops; all the wide Waste desolation of the sea Possessed me; I could not agree With aught of earth or firmament. Where could I go? which way I went His melancholy shade did glide Behind the rocks, among the trees, And whispered in the twilight breeze Endearments whispered long ago. In constancy of love and fear My sick heart bore his heavy bier, How lovingly the angels know.

I knew not of my lost love's tomb, Whether amid the shrouding gloom Of some tenebrous yawning chasm, Or in the watery world's abysm, He met those spectres of my dream; No trace, no sign, no faintest gleam Did 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 tell What on that dreadful night befell, And how when in the toils of death He called me with his latest breath And blessed me? It will magnify The joys of that dear home on high If memory keep our bygone woe, Our grievings of this world below.

A huntress of the woods I grew, Necessity my frailty taught To track the fleetest quarry through The forest, wet with morning dew, Unheedful of the bruises wrought On tender feet; the wounds received From thorns whose leafy garb deceived My glowing limbs. My loosened hair I 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 cheeks A languishing and slumbering haze, The mellow Indian Summer crept; It was as if chaste Dryads wept At sign of Winter's coming tread, Till from their falling tears was spread Those exhalations o'er the woods Amid whose greenest solitudes Their 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 reach Of waves that were attuned to sorrow, Lay lifeless on the strand of time.

So ebbed my life till beamed the hour When burst in sudden bloom the flower Of merciful deliverance. That day I walked as in a trance, My dismal round, as was my wont, To many a joy forsaken haunt Where oft upon my lover's breast My head had lain in blissful rest, Till coming to that sea-beat height Where erst, enrobed in golden light, His hands, aglow with love, conferred Upon my brow the spousal wreath, Whilst heaven and all things underneath His words of sweet adorement heard. There failed my limbs, and long I sate At one with thoughts grown desperate. Two winters had I known since first I stood upon that Isle accurst, The third a near, and how could I Its killing frosts and snows defy? Surely 'twere better now to die. So ran my thoughts, and fair in sight The breakers tossed their plumes of white, The same as on that fearful day When bravely through their blinding spray My menaced lover fought his way. I listened to their luring speech Till lost in lornest fantasy; Till toward me they did seem to reach White 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 wave Oh should thy faithful Marguerite Thy lonely corse in darkness meet How 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 glance Sent o'er the deep to sunny France, When hove directly into view A sail, a ship! could it be true? Or but a phantom sent to mock My madness on that lonely rock? Agape I stood with staring eyes An instant, then my frantic cries Went o'er the deep, they heard, they saw, Those mariners, and from the maw Of Death my timely rescue made. My Country's flag the good ship bore, And just as day began to fade We parted from that fatal shore, And long ere moonrise many a mile To northward loomed the Demon's Isle. Soon, homeward bound, again I trod My native soil, and thanked my God For 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 skill In 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 bliss That points a better world than this; Here shall I seek from Heaven to win Forgiveness for my days of sin; Here shall my soul in prayer ascend For him I loved; my godlike friend, My Husband! if that honored name Is due to one who naught of blame, No falsehood, no unmanly art Ere harbored in his open heart, Then truly can nor ban nor bar Deny 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 sits Till blooms the morn, I dare not pray The gentle shade to haste away.

NOTE TO P. 24.--The settlement of Roberval at Quebec was a disastrous failure. It is said that the King, in great need of Roberval, sent Cartier to bring him home. It is said, too, that, in after years, the Viceroy essayed to repossess himself of his transatlantic domain, and lost his life in the attempt. Thevet, on the other hand, with ample means of learning the truth, affirms that Roberval was slain at night, near the Church of the Innocents, in the heart of Paris.--Parkman, Pioneers of France.

EUDORA.

Like a white blossom in a shady place, Upon her couch the pure Eudora lay, Lovely in death; and on her comely face,-- So soon to make acquaintance with the clay,-- Fell faint the languid light of evening gray, Flecked with the pea-blooms at the window case.

Deep sobbings echoed in the outer hall, And all things in the chamber seemed to mourn;-- The pictures, which she loved, along the wall, The cherubs on the frescoed ceiling, lorn, Looked downward on the face so wan and worn, And sad each wavy curtain's foamy fall.

Born with the last, the long laborious sigh, Her soul, expanding upward, wondrous fair, Lingered regretful, loath to seek the sky, Loath to forsake its sister-semblance there; And, hovering in the chamber's dusky air, Gazed on its blank abode with piteous eye.

There, too, glad-winged, impatient to depart,-- Betwixt the fragrant window and the maid,-- The Angel-Guardian of her gentle heart, And now the escort of her trembling shade, Pointed to where the day-beams never fade, Pointed their path on the celestial chart.

Then spoke Eudora's Soul: "My comely shell, Bleached with a silent grief which we alone, Which only thou and I have known too well, In cities and in solitudes have known,-- Poor pallid tenement! no more my own, I grieve, and yet rejoice to say farewell!

"Rejoice that all thine agony is past, That never more on thee, my down-blown tent, Will beat wild sorrow's suffocating blast;-- And grieve that thou, with whom some years I've spent, Albeit in latter days with discontent, Must now into the nether night be cast.

"Once thou wert happy; cheery nights and days Chasing each other o'er a flowery plain, Like fairy lovers; all thy modest ways Fell on fond hearts as falls the summer rain On heat-rived earth, on thirsty fields of grain, And thine the golden harvest of their praise.

"Half woman grown, half lost in reverie, Love's marvel came, and I, thine inner life, Was calm and tempest-tossed alternately; For though my fluttering heart with joy was rife, Some premonition of impending strife Flitted betwixt us and futurity.

"The woods our secret knew; their quivering lips Uttered it audibly; the conscious flowers Blushed as we passed them to their throbbing tips, And all the blissful warblers of green bowers Told it each morning to the waking hours;-- Old ocean knew it, and the queenly ships.

"O dream of dreams, too exquisite to stay! In which I sailed as in a rosy-cloud That floats around the heavens a summer's day, And when at eve the drowsy woods are bowed, Responsive to the wind that calls aloud, Is rent in fragments and dissolves away.

"So fled my dream when fled the vital spark Of loved Lysander; Oh! his peerless eyes Held all the light that piloted my bark, All the warm sunshine of entrancing skies.-- 'Cold on the battle-field the hero lies,' So sang the bards, and all the world grew dark!"

At this her tender yearnings, all unplumed, Fluttered and faltered into silent awe, And gasping pause; two gleamy drops illumed Her incorporeal features, and the thaw Of frozen love-throbs, true to mercy's law, Gave solace, and her heart-tale she resumed.--

"A foreign despot dared invade our coast, And brave Lysander sped to meet the foe; His was the voice that led the patriot host, And his the arm that laid the tyrant low; Thine own fond lips, Eudora, bade him go, For love of country was thy girlish boast.

"With triumph crowned our gallant warrior fell! And other suitors sought to win thy hand, And kindred strove to break the evil spell, And deemed that travel in a distant land,-- The Orient's classic vales and mountains grand,-- Might calm thy secret sorrow's turbid swell.

"In vain the Alps arose, in vain we gazed Up the sheer heights where climbed Napoleon's host, And saw the towering peaks where crashed and blazed The war of storms that pleased Childe Harold most, Where now with Jura sits his gloomy ghost, Above the world he loathed sublimely raised.

"Nor Como's lovely lake, nor Arno's stream, Nor wonders of the Adriatic shore, Nor those immortal cities which redeem From time and death a venerated lore, Whose spell the world confesses evermore, Could shake the winter torpor of our dream.

"O how my supplications eve and morn, Wrestled for him! how frantic my appeal!-- And when he was not, I, a thing forlorn! Waylaid and robbed of hope, did cease to kneel, For Heaven no balsam had my hurt to heal, And oft I wished that thou hadst ne'er been born."

The Spirit ceased, her humid eyes still bent On the prone form to which she fain would cleave; Then thus the Angel: "Weak is thy lament! The joys of earth but sparkle to deceive,-- And know you not that he for whom you grieve Awaits our coming in the firmament?

"Dear to the people dwelling in the skies Is he who for his country copes with death, And, vanquished or victorious, nobly dies; The air that gives and takes his latest breath Is thence inhaled by souls of feeble faith, And freedom flashes from their lifted eyes.

"Come! dear Eudora, while the waning light Burns on the lakes and on the mountain tops; My arm shall aid thee in thy upward flight:-- Soon shall we pass beyond those shining drops, Where utmost telescopic vision stops, The limit of a Herschel's baffled sight.

"See! chaste Andromeda unbinds her hair For us to tread upon; we need not fear Proud Leo wakeful in his azure lair, Nor Taurus' rampant horns and brow severe, Nor all the glittering terrors that appear In Ursa's stormy mouth and hungry glare.

"Come! every star now beckons us to come, O timid sister! spread thy budded wings. Dost thou not hear the sanctifying hum Of airy voices? precious whisperings? List! on the verge of heaven a seraph sings:-- 'Come home, come hither, weary wanderers, come!'"

No more she spoke, but tremulous, amazed, With hands upon her panting bosom crost, Far, far away abstractedly she gazed, As if in beatific vision lost,-- As one just freed from earth's sepulchral frost, And suddenly to 'wildering glories raised.

Only an instant thus, for now her Ward Became transfigured, robed in awful light; Too beautiful for mortal man's regard; And swift through cloudy rifts, with moonbeams bright, These two immortals winged their starry flight, Their home revealed, the golden gates unbarred.

THE VOICE OF THE AGES.

The years roll on, and with them roll The burden of the human soul, The ache and pain Of heart and brain, That hear far off a solemn night-bell toll.

List! ringing clear, another sound Reverberates the world around. The rapt Soul listens; A tear-drop glistens Down her pale cheek and trickles to the ground:--

A tear of joy, for she hath heard The promise of the ancient Word Over the dark Prevailing: hark! "All thy hopes, wan Soul, now sere and blurred,

Shall surely yet rebud and bloom; Discard thy self-spun robe of gloom, Awake! arise! More just and wise, Thy failing lamp with higher life relume.

The prophecy of ages past Shall be fulfilled at last;-- Lo! man shall rise With fadeless glory in his eyes, His knowledge clarified, illumed and vast.

Thou wert of old, thou art, shalt be, A thing unbound and ever free To work, and will,-- A throb, a thrill,-- A joyous breath of immortality."

THE WOODLAND WALK.

Through the murk of the night, thou rememberest well, The year and the month and the day of the week, When we slipped away from that great hotel, To escape the Babel of tongues that fell, With wearisome sameness of sound and swell, On ears that had wiser employ to seek. The night was as calm as a child's first prayer, And we did not venture one word to speak Till we entered the path of the cool green wood, And felt in our whispering hearts it was good, For thee and me to be there.

Thy hand on my arm, we held our way Till we came to the mountain lake, The dear little woodland lake, Where together we sat on its margin gray, And queried on all they meant to say, The batrachian people that round it spake;-- And the peace of the skies, with stars o'erstrown, Passed into our souls, my life! my own! And I loved the universe more for thy sake.

Gladly we watched the full-orb?d moon Rising behind the shimmering trees, Till she kissed their slumbering brows, when soon In a silvery sea they sank in swoon. When over them ran a tremulous breeze,-- While they dreamt of joy and murmured their love To the Lady who laughed at their worship above,-- Making a mimic noon.

Down over the rim of the forest she looked, So chaste her beauty, all evil things, With or without or feet or wings, In the might of her purity felt rebuked.-- She looked in her mirror, the lake, to behold Her image once more:-- "It was lovely of yore, And cannot grow charmless, cannot grow old, No wrinkle the malice of years hath wrought On that envied brow, which is fair to-night As when the first pair of true lovers sought My friendly smiles to aid their flight, And hallow the vows their twin-hearts taught."

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