Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SISTER ANNUNCIATA: 1. AN ANNIVERSARY, by AUGUSTA DAVIES WEBSTER


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SISTER ANNUNCIATA: 1. AN ANNIVERSARY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: My wedding day! A simple happy wife
Last Line: But yet I would I had not seen that face.
Alternate Author Name(s): Home, Cecil; Webster, Mrs. Julia Augusta
Subject(s): Nuns


MY wedding day! A simple happy wife,
Stolen from her husband's sight a little while
To think how much she loved him, might so kneel
Alone with God and love a little while,
(For if the Church bless love, is love a sin?)
And, coming back into the happy stir
Of children keeping the home festival,
Might bring the Heaven's quiet in her heart;
Yes, even coming to him, coaxing him
With the free hand that wears his fetter on it,
Sunning her boldly in his look of love,
And facing him with unabashed fond eyes
Might, being all her husband's, still be God's
And know it--happy with no less a faith
Than we who, ever serving at His shrine,
Know ourselves His alone.
Am I sinning now
To think it? Nay, no doubt I went too far:
The bride of Christ is more than other women;
I must not dare to even such to me.
They have their happiness, I mine; but mine
Is it not of Heaven heavenly, theirs of earth,
And therefore tainted with earth's curse of sin?
Did Mary envy Martha? Oh my Lord
Forgive thy handmaid if her spirit lone,
A little lone because the clog of flesh
That sunders it from Thee still burdens it
With the poor human want of human love,
Hungry a moment and by weakness snared,
Has dared, with the holy manna feast in reach,
To think on Egypt's fleshpots and not loathe.
Oh! Virgin Mother, pray thou for thy child,
That I who have escaped the dangerous world,
Rising above it on thy altar steps,
May feel the heavens round me lifting me,
Lifting me higher, higher, day by day,
Until the glory blinds me, and my ears
Hear only Heaven's voices, and my thoughts
Have passed into one blending with His will,
And earth's dulled memories seem nothingness!
Ah me! poor soul, even here 'tis a hard fight
With the wiles of Satan! Was the Abbess wise
To set me, in the night too when one most
Is tempted to let loose forbidden dreams
And float with them back to the far-off life
Of foolish old delights,--yes, was she wise
To set me in the night-hush such a watch,
Wherein "to think upon my ancient life
With all its sins and follies, and prepare
To keep my festival for that good day
That wedded me out of the world to Christ?"
She has forgotten doubtless, "tis so long
Since she came here, how, trying to recall
Girl sins and follies, some things of the past
Might be recalled too tenderly, and so
The poisonous sad sweet sin of looking back
Steal on one unawares.
Oh hush! alas
How easy 'tis to sin! Now I have tripped;
Obedience must not question. But one learns
With every hour of growing holiness
How bitter Satan is against the Saints.
I muse if I, who of the sisterhood
Am surely, now that Agatha is dead,
The nearest saintly practice, most in prayer,
And most in penance, crucifying most
The carnal nature, till they point to me
With pride for the convent and some envy too
For themselves left lower in the race--if I
Am tripped so often, how then fare the rest?
Though doubtless Satan does not track so close
Until he fears one. But they are less armed:
Alas how he may break them! Poor weak souls,
How I shall pray for them: for bye and bye,
Doubtless, I shall be freer from the self
I have yet to guard, my victory will be won
And I shall tread on sin, invulnerable,
As the Saints do at last.
If I, that is,
Might reach the goal I strain at, the one goal
Ambition may seek sinless--though I faint
The goal I will attain. I think in truth
My feet are on the road, and, let them bleed
Among the thorns, I still press on.
Perhaps
It is because she sees how strong I grow,
She gave me this ordeal, this the first year-day,
Out of the several, she has risked it. No.
She'd not have tried one of the others thus;
She sees I shall not fail. I cannot think,
Although she knows me her successor here,
She plans to lessen me from a renown
Of sanctity that bids to dwindle hers.
No--she is kind, there is no seeming in it,
And simply good, although no miracle
Of self-set discipline, and her meek mind
Would find a daughter's merit glorying
The convent's name glory enough for her--
She is my friend.
Ah! I remember me
In the first days--when I was sad and restless
And seemed an alien in a hopeless world,
All form and pious parrot-talk, a home
For stunting dull despair shut from the sun,
A nursery to bloat the sick self in
To a mis-shapen God to feed whose fires
The loves and hopes and faiths, the very life
Of the young heart must perish, and I knew
For the best future nothing but a blank,
For then the present bitterness of death,
The horrible death in life--my first belief
In any comfort earlier than the grave's
Came from a touch of tenderness in her,
Only a tone, a look as she passed by
Where I was sitting by the broken well,
Looking at the green growth that overslimed
The never heaven waters, thinking "this,
The image of the thing my life becomes,
Unlighted, unlightgiving, ignorant
Of sunflash and of shadow, with the slime
Of utter foul stagnation hiding heaven
As surely as its narrow walls fair earth,
And under all, chill, chill!" "God bless you daughter,"
She said; her usual greeting, but it came
With the kind of sound one likes to dwell upon--
A little trivial phrase in the right tone
Makes music for so long. "God bless you daughter"
As if she meant it--and there was the touch
Of a mere womanly pity in her eyes.
So her blessing loosed the bands about my heart,
And the passion of tears broke out.
'Twas the first time
Since the night before they brought me to my vows
In a passive dream; I think because since then
I had been hopeless, and it must have been
That the feeling of a human tenderness
Still folding me, made something like a hope,
Feeding my withering heart like water drops
Given the poor plant brought from the fresh free air
And natural dewings of the skyward soil,
Where its wild growth took bent at the wind's will,
To learn indoors an artificial bloom
Or die. Before it had been too near death
For weeping--And the comfort of those tears!
I almost wish that I could weep so now!
No, no, I take again my wish, which was a sin;
It was no wish, a fancy at the most;
Lord, let it not be numbered with my sins!
What mere mad sin against the spirit, that,
If I could wish to lose my hard-won state
Of holy peace. And wherefore should I weep?
For what endurance? I who have inhaled
The rich beatitude of my spousalship,
To the heart's core.
But then I only saw
The human side, knew but the present loss
Of the outer bloom of life, and did not know
That, stripped of the flower-wings, the fruit grew on,
Yea, and to ripe to immortality,
In this sure shelter. Or I knew it, say,
As I know that bye and bye, when I am dead,
I shall be sunned in the grave on summer days,
While, if one now were standing in the frosts,
The chariest winter beam were something, all;
And what such summers waiting for the time
Of silence and of change? A sorry mocking
Of hungering hope with bitter dead sea fruit.
She preached to me, good woman, when she turned,
Catching the breath of my outswelling grief,
And, with the softened smile some mothers rest
Upon their children, came to me quietly,
And sat beside me there. No doubt she ran
Her whole small simple round of eloquence;
I have heard it all since then, I think; but then
I did not hear--a murmur in my ears
That hummed on, soothing, like a lullaby.
And through it I perceived some scraps of texts,
And godly phrases, and examples drawn
From the lives of the saints, and wise encouragements;
And I wept on. But the warm touch of her hands
Nursing my right hand in them motherly,
And the feeling of her kindly neighbourhood,
These spoke a language that I understood
And thrilled to in my desolate mood. Through them
That heavy sense of prison loneliness,
Whether I moved alone or companied,
Was lifted from my heart, broken away
In the rushing of my tears; and even from then,
Wherefore I know not, I was moved to grope
Up from the dark towards the light of Heaven.
But ah the long ascent! It was enough
At first to learn the patience that subdued
My throbbing heart to its new quiet rule,
The hope of Heaven that bore down earth's despair--
But these were comfort, and the craving grew
As natural for them as the sick man's
For the pain-soothing draught he learned perforce
To school his palate to. But then the effort
To be another self, to know no more
The fine-linked dreams of youth, the flying thoughts
Like sparkles on the wave-tops changing place
And all one scattered brightness, the high schemes
And glorious wild endeavours after good,
Fond, bubble-soaring, but how beautiful!
The sweet unreal reveries, the gush
Of voiceless songs deep in the swelling heart,
The dear delight of happy girlish hopes--
Of, ah my folly! some hopes too strange sweet
That I dare think of them even to rebuke--
Ah not to be forgotten though they lie
Too deep for even memory. Alas!
Even if I would, how could I now recall
To their long-faded forms those phantasies
Of a far, other, consciousness which now
Beneath the ashes of their former selves
Lie a dead part of me, but still a part,
Oh evermore a part.
I do not think
There can be sin in that, in knowing it.
I am not nursing the old foolish love
Which clogged my spirit in those bitter days.
Ah no, dear as it was even in its pain,
I have trampled on it, crushed its last life out.
I do not dread the beautiful serpent now;
It cannot breathe again, not if I tried
To warm it at my breast, it is too dead
And my heart has grown too cold; the Lord himself,
I thank Him, has renewed it virgin-cold
To give to Him. I do but recognize
A simple truth, that that which has been lived,
Lived down to the deeps of the true being, is
Even when past for ever, has become
Inseparable from the lifelong self:
But yet it lives not with the present life.
So, in this wise, I may unshamed perceive
That the dead life, that the dead love, are still
A part of me
Nay do I fool myself?
Why do I fever so thinking of him?
Why do I think of him? What brought his face
So vividly before me? Angelo,
Art thou in the night-stillness waking now
Remembering me, remembering me who came
A little moment into thy bright life
And seemed to make it brighter, and then passed,
Leaving no doubt a little cloud behind,
Till when? Till now? Till death comes with the end?
Or till the other's smile had lighted it
With the rich rose of dawn to brighter day?
While she lies dreaming of the dainty dress
Ordered for next night's ball, art thou indeed
Thinking, alone in heart, of former days,
And asking the dull hush to speak of me?
Or is it but a careless memory
Passing thy dreamy thought a moment long,
A wondering lightly "Is she reconciled
To the lot they gave her?" But, whate'er it be,
Surely some thought of shine came to me now
And called mine to thee.
Nay, it must not be.
Oh once my own beloved, now a mere name,
A name of something that one day was dear,
In an old world, to one who is no more,
Vex me no more with idle communings,--
Love me, love her, what matters it to me?
I stand as far apart as angels are
From earthly passion--not by my own strength,
But by the grace shewn in me, and the bar
Of my divine espousal. Stand far off
Even in thought.
Yes, though this was thy word,
That long fond evening when we stole apart
Out of the music and the talking, when
We stood below the orange-boughs abloom,
And the sweet night was silent, and the waves
Were rocking softly underneath the moon,
Asleep in the white calm, and we, alone,
Were whispering all our hearts each into each:
"Eva, my Eva, darling of my life,
If they should part us still you are my all.
I will not love the other. She might bear
My name, gild with the purchase money for it
Our houses' tarnished splendours, rear the heirs
Of its new greatness.--You, you, only you,
In your cold prison, would be wife to me,
Wife of my soul. Are we not one, love, so?
They could not beat down that; and I would live
In a secret world with you, so that in Heaven
I could claim you boldly, 'this was my own wife'
And all the angels know it true."
Ah me!
How long that wild rapt promise hindered me
In my first struggles for the Saints' cold peace,
Because he spoke it in a certain tone--
Sometimes he used it--that had a strange power
To thrill me with strange pleasure through and through
And leave long after echoes still possessed
Of something more than most tones, even his,
And easier to recall at will; and these
Remained with me; I could not quite forego
Their dangerous sweetness. So the Tempter came
Saying always "He too thinks of them" and I
Would be so weak, so wicked, that I thought,
"I cannot try to be in perfectness
One of the Heavenly Brides, lest I succeed
And, standing white-robed with the virgin train
Who in the after kingdom follow Christ,
See him and know him and am lost to him,
Even there where the last hope was."
But now,
No more my love for ever, now at length
In this more perfect day of my raised soul,
I can say calmly: "Though this was thy word
I do not bid thee honour it." It was
The dream of a mad moment, let it pass:
I would not hold thee to it if I could:
I scale a heavenward height, and if I shiver
A little, just a little, in the snows,
On the darker days, should I for this descend
Into the earth-balmed valley and forego
The victories of my toiling steps, the crown
Of my long enterprize! No, though thy voice
Were thrice and thrice as eager-sweet as when
Long since it said "be mine in earth" to say
"Be mine in heaven" I could not wait for thee.
I go alone, wearing my spousal ring,
My bridal throne is ready.
But, although
I love thee now with only such a love
As a dead saint might love that looked from Heaven,
It is no sin that I should yearn for thee
That thou mightst also rise and lift thyself
Out from the world, leaving its honeyed wines
That overglad the heart, its corn and oil,
For the barren mountain-summit near God's stars,
In the cold pure air where the earth's growths dwine off,
Leaving the joys of common life, the pride,
The beauty and the love; perceiving nought
Except the goal of such a holiness
As I would bid thee strive for. Ah! my brother,
If this might be, and we two, though apart,
Were one in such an aim!
But can I tell
If thou art Angelo whom once I knew?
She with her silly beauty, smiling forth
The brightness of her self-complacency
Till one might easily be taken in
And fancy she'd at least just so much heart
As served to wish one well with-may she not
By now have dazzled thee or flattered thee
Till thou hast given her thy heart for plaything--
All she could make of it! It might be so:
For there were times, when thou and I, poor children,
Were chafing impotent while stronger hands
Made havoc of our simple lovers' plot,
That I half jealous, though I doubted not
Thy inmost faith to me, thought piteously:
"Ah but for the marvellous gold of those loose curls,
And the glitter of those crystal-brown strange eyes
Perfect in sudden glances and drooped coyness,
He might have made them know the task too hard
To bend him to their scheming."
Yes, I feared,
Even while I said: "I wrong him by the thought"
My own own lover, like the warriors
In some old fight I knew of ere the lore
Of secular things grew babble talk to me,
Was dazzled in the eyes by the strong sun,
The sun that was her beauty, and so fought
As if in the dark and vainly.
Could it be?
I do not think it. In the days of love
One doubts because one loves, because one knows
One is too willing to be credulous:
But, now that there is no sweet weakness left
To daze my judgment, I can vouch for him.
He, having, in the teeth of interest
And the worldly prudence preached from both our homes,
Chosen me to love, me with a mind and soul
And woman's worth enough on me to love
In something more than pretty kitten's play;
Me with some dusky beauty of my own--
If in all else made less by hers yet more,
I think, to those who care to see a life
Shew through the breathing mask, more by the power
(Mine and not hers let her be earth's most fair)
To steal from gazing eyes the accurate sense,
Of parts and shapings of it and to leave
"The long impression"--thus he imaged it--
"Of a beauty like the sky's on some rare eve,
When glow and shadow, and the luminous change
Of perfect-blended yet contrasted dyes,
And blueness of the ether, make a oneness
Of something higher than the different names,
We fit to different kinds of beauty hold
A meaning for; and we can only feel
The soul-deep influence, and cannot scan
The several parts, nor say 'the best is there'
Nor 'I have seen sometimes a richer rose,
One morn a purer gold'; nor can retain
A perfect presence of it, but retain
Mid the deep memories that build up lives,
Though out of sight beneath and overlapped
By the hiding Present, a long consciousness
Of something known beyond mere perfectness."
He, prizing me at this, he, knowing me
In my true self, and knowing that I loved him,
Could he turn patiently to a mere face,
A mere most lovely dainty-blossomed face
And statue-moulded body--only this?
Nothing to meet him in his higher moods;
Nothing to rise with him from the dull round
Of the drudging daily self; nothing to hold
The overflowings of his deeper soul;
No mind in which to measure his grave thoughts;
No thoughts with which to swell them. Could he drop
From the proud height of my love to such as hers,
Unconscious of the fall and well-content?
No: time may have perchance, (tho' for his sake
I cannot hope it), levelled down to her
His husband's heart, but that were but the fret
And gradual moulding of the many days,
And over-mastering custom: she had never
That triumph on me.
Though my mother once,
(Breaking the shadowy twilight where I sat
Lest she should see me weep, with flouting light,
And the sad quiet of my lonely thoughts
With most unwonted icy comforting),
Bade me believe, because she had the proofs,
Or almost proofs, that Angelo was glad
To be compelled to her whom he would call
Even in my hearing 'Fairest of the roses'
And, though he prized me in a certain sort
For the memory of a boyhood's rash first love
And out of kindness to my love for him,
It was perceived by those who knew him best--
Nay more was growing common talk to them--
That his fancy for me palled apace and love
For the bright Giulia overmastered quite
The stress he put to hide it for the sake
Of humouring my weakness to the last,
And saving me from scorn's deriding finger
That mocks the maiden who is true too long
She said it, yes, just in such sudden words,
Unwavering: but I, did I believe?
Too much was said; no doubt a little less,
An inference, a little sharp-barbed hint
Touching my sometimes fears and making them
More real to me, might have served the need;
But such a tale was idle as the threats
Of the outside wind wild-storming in the dark
To one who sleeps well-housed. Why, all the more
Because he never shrank from giving praise,
To that most evident beauty though I heard,
I knew what worth the pretty plaything's smiles
Were counted at in his more earnest moods.
She touch his heart! my very bitterest fears
Were that his mere man's fancy might be caught,
And harm be done before the cloying came.
You did but anger me, proud mother mine,
With your pretended soothings. Was it worth
Having queened it for so many frigid years
Over your daughters' lives and never once
Stooped to a little pet word, or a kiss
Beyond the formal seal that stamped receipt
Of our daily homage paid, or just a look;
To shew you knew what mother-loving meant--
Was it worth to come down from your pedestal
At the last moment thus to play the part
Of a mere common woman softening down
Her girl's weak grief at fate inevitable?
You could not do it either; for your talk
Of sorrow and of sympathy was such
As singing might be coming from one deaf
But newly learning speech by watching lips.
Yet, maybe, at the last she felt some pang,
Maybe, altho' she would not change her purpose--
Could not perhaps--our uncle has some power
I think, beyond advising, in the house
He rules with her by such an iron rod,
And, once our destinies mapped out by him
What human will, what human suffering
Could alter them? "We have concluded thus"--
Swelling himself in the authority
Of priestly greatness and of guardianship;
"We have concluded thus"--and then my mother
Would nod assent, and what remained to us
His brother's children, hers, but mute submission?
But she, maybe, the parting near, was moved,
The mother-heart in her touched thro' the frosts
Long custom had clogged round it; or else why
Should she at all have tried to mould my will
Into content? She might have kept her height
Of questionless command: what mattered it
If I should fret or no? Thus stood the case:
There were too many daughters in our home,
Too scanty portioning, and, with a name
So high as ours, need was that none should wed
But with the other noblest houses: then
It must not be that one of the three sons
Should be too poor to bear up from the dust
The honour of his heirship of long race:
And where were dowers for such brides, and where
Gold purses for the spending of such sons?
At least one dower might be saved, one girl
Must choose the cloister. Who but Eva then?
Eva who, wise with fifteen years of life,
Had recognized her call to saintly life:
Eva who, in her folly of eighteen,
Had chosen for herself such a mad match,
Impossible, with one even as herself
Of an impoverished house, whose princely kin
Wise-judging knew the pair must never wed
And had a richer bride in hand for him.
What mattered it if I said 'yea' or 'nay'
'It likes me' or 'it likes me not'? There stood
The argument, could weeping alter it,
Or a girl's angers? Why should she have cared
To set herself a task so out of wont,
Unless she felt some yearning to her child
And fain would have me sorrow something less
And go from her in peace?
Yes, I will think
You did mean kindness and the comforting
That angered pride might give me in my need.
But, mother, had you known a little more
Of your child's heart, of any human heart,
You would have known what bitter death in life
Your words believed would bring me, stabbing me
With the last despair of scorning while I loved.
And, since you could not fail to recognize
Something of your own pride retraced in me,
I marvel you saw not how you must rouse
Its strength against belief with such a tale.
A meek prompt faith! for the blowing of some breaths
Of "thus they say"s to think oneself so slight
As to be brushed off like a clinging burr,
Shaken into the mud beneath his feet
By the man one honoured with one's whole of love!
And more, I marvel that you did not feel
"Her Angelo is out of reach of scorn,
And she could not believe unless she scorned,"
And know untried the vainness of your talk.
Oh, only love, I never broke my truth
By questionings of yours, and you, I know,
Had in me that blind trust that was my right--
And yet we are apart. Oh! it is hard!
Has God condemned all love except of Him?
Will He have only market marriages
Or sprung from passion fancies soon worn out,
Lest any two on earth should partly miss
The anger and distrust that haunt earth's homes
And cease to know there is no calm till death?
None for who lives the outside waking life:
We are calm here, calm enough. Oh Angelo
Why am I here in the ceaseless formal calm
That makes the soul swell to one bursting self
And seem the whole great universe, the while
It only sees itself, learns of itself,
Hopes for itself, feeds, preys upon itself
And not one call comes to it from without
"Think of me too, a little live for me,
Take me with thee in growing nearer God"?
Why am I--?
Am I mad? Am I mad? I rave
Some blasphemy which is not of myself!
What is it? Was there a demon here just now
By me, within me? Those were not my thoughts
Which just were thought or spoken--which was it?
Oh not my thoughts, not mine! All saints of heaven
Be for me, answer for me; I am yours,
I am your Master's, how can I be Satan's?
I have not lost my soul by the wild words.
Not yet, not yet.
Oh this was what I feared.
The night-watch is a long one and I flag,
My head is hot, I feel the fever fire
Of weariness before the languor comes.
I am left prey to Satan's snares for those
Who too much live again the former life
In the dangerous times of unwatched loneliness.
He lurks in those retrodden paths, he makes
His snaky coils of all these memories,
Clogging them round my spirit. Is the work
Of long long months, of years, undone in a night?
Alas! the ordeal is too hard for me.
I am shut out in the dark! where is the oil
To feed the virgin's lamp? What! are these tears
Only of water? They should be of blood
Fitter to weep my sin in.
I will wait;
I cannot gather those old histories.
My mind is wandering. I cannot tell
How far I went, nay, if I had begun.
I cannot think. But I can weep and pray.
Surely I may break thus much the command
And yet obey. Oh I may stop to pray
And to repent. Oh I may weep and pray,
So broken as I am. All saints of Heaven
Pray with me, for me, pray or I am lost.
I lost! I lost! Heaven's mercy on me, lost!

Have I slept? But no, I think I was in prayer
The whole time that I knelt--unless indeed
A little heavy moment at the last;
It is too chill for sleep. How strange and grey
The morning glimmers! What an awful thing,
Although one feels not why, the silence is
When the new creeping light treads on the dark
Like a white mist above it, and beside
Its leaden pallor hollow blacknesses
Lurk, shifting into limp uncertain shapes.
No place so long familiar but it seems
Weird and unwonted in such eery hours.
I wish my taper could have lingered out,
Until the yellow dawn. Was that the wind
Hissing between the jarring lattice crannies,
Or a whispering voice in the room? Hush there again!
Nay 'tis the wind. What voice should come to me?
I hear no voices, I; no visions yet
Break on my trancèd eyes when I seek God.
I have not risen so high; neither I think
Fallen so at Satan's mercy that he dare
Front me with open tokens of the watch
Which he keeps whensoe'er one of his foes
Keeps holy watch alone. Yes, there again!
It is the rising wind-gust. How it moves
The shadow of that pine-bough on the wall,
Just growing plain-defined upon the square
The window makes of light across the room.
One might see it like an arm now, finger stretched
In act to curse--a withered witch-like arm
Waving its spells. But then another shadow,
The cross from the mullions, lies athwart it there
And that is steady. So the cross prevails
Over the curse.
Nay I am idle now
Wasting my vigil time in childish pranks
With unloosed fancy. Though I seem too tired
To school my wayward thoughts it must be done,
They must not wander thus. But this grey glint,
Not light nor darkness, but between, like dreams
When one has slept and struggles to awake,
Unfits one for the real things of thought.
I wonder is the spirit-world more near
In the mystery of twilight than when day
Floods its broad reckless sunlight everywhere.
One feels it nearer. In these creeping hours
One might so readily, when one had prayed
With a spiritual passion half the night
To have some message sent one, something shown
That should reveal one clearly chosen His
To glorify Him to the world, be fooled
By eager faith and think that in the dusk
One saw the longed-for vision, or one knew
A voice inborne upon one's soul; while yet
The high revealings were not granted one
Found too unworthy still. Sometimes I think
For me there is that danger--not to-night,
I am so heavy with the weight of sleep
Upon my struggling lips--no not to-night;
I feel too far from God even to be duped
By poor rapt fancy, communing with shadows,
Exulting ignorant in the dread deceit
Which sets in place of God's most marvellous blessing
A mocking and a curse.
Yet why a curse?
If honour grow to God and nought be falsed
Save something in the powers of one poor mind
That dreams and is the holier and more glad,
What were so much amiss? Why it might be
That God works so upon his messengers,
Not giving them the visions, as they think,
In some true substance, heavenly, made pure
From the earth matter, yet left evident
To eyes and ears; but giving to their souls
A consciousness, nay why not say a dream,
Real because He wills, not in itself,
Having no outward counterpart? And thus--
Sometimes I think it, pondering on the lives
Of some of those most favoured--they might say
"I heard, I saw," and speak Heaven's perfect truth,
And yet be dreamers in the human sense.
Dreamers! and I who fear to dream, and pray
To be saved, as from a lurking enemy,
From my too eager self! But, if 'twere thus
That God revealed Himself, what should one think
Of keeping guard against one's passioned hopes
For fear of self-deceit? Would that be war
Against oneself or God? Why, self deceit
Would be that God deceived one, would be truth
Beyond the truest human yea and nay.
It rather seems one should be effortless,
A leaf upon the river, or a leaf
At the will of the unwarning winds of heaven,
Yes, could one, being in a state of grace,
Grow vacant of all will and merely wait
In a moodless passive lull, what likelier
Than that such were the moment to receive
The glow spiritual, and that the quick tide
Of thoughts and rapt imaginings flooding in
Upon the soul upbreaking from its hush
Were not one's own, but Heaven's? Needs there voice
Heard with the ears, or shape seen with the eyes,
Or aught in contact with the body's sense,
To make the spirit's high realities?
Who knows what visions are? Why should I fear
To think I see and see not? If the Lord
Be pleased to press upon His handmaid's soul
Revealings of His glory, should I urge
Our crude material tests and then "If dreams
Then these were nothings"? But such dreams vouchsafed
Must be--can I err in thinking this?--God's facts,
Beside which all we know by outward proof
Were liker nothings, mere clay images
To evidence to the lower human life
What the divine life in the saint's freed soul
Perceives as souls perceive in Heaven.
And yet
Signs outward have been proved: some have been seen
By the eyes of many, crowned with marvellous light,
Or in their presence lifted from the earth.
There have been visible tokens--was there not
Our own St Catherine who received the wounds
In an awful mystery, bearing them till death?
Or could such be a constant vision pressed
On the eyes of all who looked? Yet scarcely that.
Still she and such as she would need no proofs;
Would know when Heaven was open to them--proofs
Are for bystanders; but when lonely saints
Unwatched, in still communion with their God,
Kneel silently and have forgotten earth,
Need the outward sense bear part in ecstasies
Sent to the soul or--?
What have I to do
With questioning knotty matters hard for me
A babe in the faith? The dawn is mellowing
A little gold into its leaden lights:
My time for retrospect creeps to its end,
And I cannot think, although I know I dreamed
A something of my old life in the night,
That I have met the order given me,
To the true fullness. Let me try at least
Somewhat more like confession of the faults
That should be to me in this better state
Each a distinct and hated memory.
But ah! it is so hard to summon them!
Would I were not so weary!
Fainting star,
Shivering above the strip of presage dawn,
Do you tremble at the glory stealing on
In which the world will lose you presently?
You are like one dying, one who chills and fears
While Heaven is closing round to hide his life,
He knows not how, with God. Why, it is darked:
A little cloud come on it--one might say
Death on it, and that when it issues thence
It will be flooded with the waiting glory
As the saint's soul is.
So the martyrs passed--
The blackness of an hour of agony,
And then the eternal light, the warmth, the love,
The triumph! Ah the second Catherine,
Whose painful course I keep before my eyes
As one we who live late may still achieve,
Has left a sadder wearier history
Than the first, the Alexandrian saint's. To live
A few short lifeful years made glorious
By the open courage daily fronting death,
By battle in God's name, and victories
On souls fought from false gods, and then to die
In the highest victory God has given His own,
Die His before the eyes of thousands, die
In honour that earth cannot parallel,
Nor Heaven itself surpass, die martyr-crowned,
The glory of the Church to the end of time,
The marvel of the onlooking heathen world!
Yes, that, if in this dull indifferent age
That owns the creed and neither makes nor mars
But lets the saintship grow in the shade and then
Scores it to its own credit, such a life
Could find a place and such a death be earned,
That were the leadership to follow forth
With one's whole will and passion. Not perplexed,
I think, would such a stirring conflict be,
Like that my slow life wages in the dark:
And then the grander ending! Yet the years
Of patient war on sin and the poor flesh,
Of the second Catherine, won her ecstasies
Not less than tranced the other, and at last
She had her meed of honour, and her name
Is all I ought--Oh but I am too fond
In my aspiring when I say so much--
Is more than all I ought to hope for mine
Among names everlasting.
And why not
My name among the holy ones like hers?
Can I not fast and pray, tear my scarred flesh,
Keep vigils day and night, dim my tired eyes
With constant weepings, stint my earthly heart
Of its most innocent food and starve it numb
With ceaseless self-denial, check my life
Even in its holiest vents? What could she more?
And I, weak as I am and prone to faint,
The fever of young life in the free world
So newly passed from me, I do not shrink
From the sharpest discipline. These many months,
Not always fainting, I have schooled myself
Upon her rigorous pattern--God alone
Knows with what strained endurance--and the proofs
Of my hardwon advance are not withheld.
At times I feel my soul borne up to Heaven
In holy rapture and I seem to breathe
A life that is not earth's: at times a hush
Falls on my being and I feel at hand
The Holy Presence, feeling nought beside,
Dulled to all passing round me: and at times
An influence is upon me and the fire
Is kindled in my heart and my words break
Into exultant praises, bursts of love,
Or else in warnings and in passionate pleadings
Torn out with sobbings and with eloquence
That is not mine and urges me myself
Even more than the awed sisters who press round,
Weeping and shaken to the very souls,
And know not what to think of the strange power
That thrills them through and through. The mother says
"'Tis a good gift--let it have vent, my child;
A blessed gift for bettering your soul
And ours;" but I perceive that secretly
She holds it more than that. The other day
She said--a speech so venturous for her
That she must long have weighed it--"Daughter, I know
That God has work for one like you to do,
Although I know not what: prepare for it:
Be patient, but be ready." And I knew
A reverence in her voice, as though she spoke
To one above her.
"God has work" she said.
Would it were come! I hunger for my work,
And see none nearer than my coming rule
Over this convent, none more glorious
Than the restricting some small laxities
In the general discipline. A petty task
For which to spur oneself.
And yet I know not--
To carry such a change as I have planned
To be, as 'twere, through the new saintly practice
The second founder of our sisterhood,
Perhaps of our whole order, were this not
A work to be remembered, work worth me?
A troubled one perhaps: the better then.
More room for zeal for God, and, overcoming,
More to have overcome.
Enough to do.
The mother, pious as she is, falls short
In courage to constrain less pious wills,
And wavers at a tear or a chafed look.
She is content moreover, sees no lapse
In the rigour of our system. 'Twill be mine
To bring the stricter laws, to wake the glow
Of a new zeal among the sisterhood
And fan it into flame, to check the growth
Of such self-sparing in the duller sort
And baby prattlings and small baby joys
In the lighter-natured as we have here now.
They must have longer vigils, sharper fasts,
Be more alone, have many hours for silence
Being together, learn to find their rest,
Their pleasure and their converse all in prayer.
Our novices must have their freedoms clipped;
They are spared too much at first, and spared too long;
They need a separate monitress, less lax,
Less pitiful-hearted than the mother is,
Yet loving them no less, one I shall choose
Among those of the sisterhood most true
To the new type, one of the saintly band
Who, gathering round the flame I shall have lit,
Will keep it living and fan on its course
Until it soars a beacon to the world,
A pure accepted altar-fire to Heaven.
I plan and plan, as if in all the years
That have to run till then there were not time
To fix my ceaseless purposes in shape,
And look not meanwhile how these minutes lose
The purpose given them and grow too few.
The morning flush has broken on the clouds
While I sat blindly watching, and wanes off:
The shimmering light is broadening into day:
The night is gone--another night laid by
To wait for us in the sepulchre of Time
With his dead children that return no more,
Until they rise in witness on The Day
To show us as we were when they beheld.
The night is gone--and I how have I used it?
Ah me! I think, amiss; but I know not.
I call to mind a night-long wilderment
Of memories and dreams, and some regrets--
I fear me much some semblance of regrets,
And a great penitence. Or am I wrong?
Did I fall asleep and dream the penitence?
For how did I so greatly sin? And yet
I do not think sleep snared me, for my mind
Was all absorbed, and when 'tis thus the body
Is triumphed over. Then I dimly know
Some deep mysterious moments--as if then--
How was it? Nay I have forgotten all;
It is but like recalling waking dreams
After a slumbrous night has dropped on them.
But this I think, I cannot cross myself
And say "I have performed the allotted task,"
And take the innocent hour of sleep allowed
Before the matin chime. I have not used
The sharp assaying meant, but in the place
Of pitiless self-rebuke and searchings out
Have dreamed, I know not what, a misty world
Of shapeless thoughts that stand like new-made ghosts
Between the dead and living. Is there time?
I must redeem the time. Go, tempting sleep:
My rest shall be to earn rest for my conscience.
How the day brightens on!
"My ancient life
With all its sins and follies." Well I set
That which for over-long was my all life
First on the roll. "My folly and my sin"
What else, since for so long it darkened Heaven
Out from my tear-blurred sight? But dwelling on it
Even now comes nearer sin than penitence.
Let the poor love-tale go! Oh never more
Let the treacherous memory stir me; it was that
That broke my calm last night and--
Let it be,
Oh idle heart! Why wilt thou tempt thyself?
The dead wasp stings lying in the faded rose
When the chills have killed them both--Let the wasp rot:
No need to risk a sudden hand to crush it.
Let the rose rot too, though its last breath be sweet,
Let it drop into the hiding mould-heaps dead
With the dead burden that is danger in it.
And so, the dead love reckoned, what stands next?
Ah the long haunting voice that called my sin
Of taking back the life once meant for God
So darkly, deadly, near--that only hope
Called it not quite--the sin against the Spirit!
No, that, the horror of so many months,
Had been the foremost, worst, the all, to reckon,
Hiding all others in its awfulness,
If I still owned it with the strange despair
My uncle's words, denouncing, terrible,
Made my soul's bitter portion once. But now
That dread is past. I was not guilty thus.
I know it, in my inmost heart I know it.
Good Father Andrea--you who, with your gift
Of patient comforting, first lighted me,
From that dim horror--you whose pastoral hand
Came, while I seemed to wait and care no more,
Lone on the dead sea of despondency,
And the chill waters lapping round their prey
Bore me indifferent to the shores of Hell,
Came heaven-blessed and stayed me-I know now
With fuller certainty than you could give,
By God's own comforting I think. I look
Clear-eyed upon that past. The fault was theirs
Who thought it wise to rate as purposes
The fanciful longings of an almost child
Let fall at fluent moments, wise to call
Her natural yearnings for some scope beyond
The round of foolish struttings petty forms,
And petty prides and petty policies
Vocation for a ministry to Heaven.
What knew I of vocation? I was galled
By the bird-snare fetters round me, longed to fly
On wild young wings towards the freer Heaven;
And, seeing, that the cage hung on the tree
Was higher than the nest upon the ground,
Said sometimes "Yet at least if I were there,"
Because I so might reach a purer sky
And breathe untainted air; but most of all
Because I longed to soar.
An almost child:
Ah yes. how young I was until my love
Awaked me woman. What had I perceived
Of the world's earnest? I could lose myself
In the high rhapsodies of eager youth,
Flame at the wrongs and weakness of the times,
And shudder at the sin; could dream the while
Of heroisms I no more understood
In their plain natures than those names of evils
I hurled my angers at; could hope and plan
Impossible better things and, imaging
A present Paradise of the whole world
If men would only think a few new thoughts,
Talk reasoning unreason, fiery-tongued,
On its blurred good and bad. But what knew I
Of its bad or of its good? My reasonings,
Silent or spoken in unguarded bursts,
What were they but a fluent ignorance
Nursed upon dreams?
They said, "She is early ripe:
Fifteen, and yet she judges of the world
As one who has all things tried and found them vain
In a grave experience: 'tis a happy thing
That she accepts the convent: we are borne clear:
She accepts it freely, being mature to choose."
And the deep world I thought I weighed and spurned
As wanting in the balance, nevertheless
Had shown me nothing of its meaning yet:
And I had not seen its brightness, had not known
What pleasure meant, when saying "It is naught,"
Nor happiness, when saying "Heaven's is all;"
And had not known the triumphs of sweet praise
On the general tongue and ringing to the ears
Of one dear over all, and had not known
The gladness of dear hope, and had not known,
Had not conceived, what love was, love-sought love,
When saying "Life is weary every day
And the wide world is barren to the heart."
They were too prompt to take my girlish fits
Of dream enthusiasm for the dream I made
Of an ideal perfectness withdrawn
From reach of sin and sorrow in the hush
Of convent calm, and turn them to their will.
The fault was theirs. But I, knowing my God
Hears me and judges, say I never framed
A set intention, spoke one purposed word
Pledging me to the life I ranked so high.
'Tis doubtless true, as Father Andrea says,
That my accuser bore me in his heart
Guiltless of that great blame and did but think
To daunt me to submission by a dread
So horrible. "Yes, yes, believe me, daughter,"
The good man always said, "'tis as I told you:
His Eminence spoke from prudence, seeing there
A way to scare you to your good, no more;
Take this for proof--only you must not know
How it came to me--he said, even on the day
You took the vows, it would have pleased him more
If you, instead of flaunting girlish scorn
At a certain great alliance hinted yours
If you so pleased, had let it be your choice
Before the convent."
So I take the proof
It fits with what his dullard Princeliness--
When he deigned to think that I, although less fair
Than the sister he had bought, might please his moods
With a more apt variety and reward;
His condescending choice by more applause
For how his princess played her brilliant part,
And, nothing doubting my delight, with mouths
Of secrecy and eyes significant,
Blinking owl mystery, and "Trust to me"
And "Never fear I'll bring the matter through"
Confided me his project--seemed to assure
As if he had tried his way, "No convent, no;
This queenly Eva must not hide from us;
She is to shine in the world. Let her but smile
And put a little hand in mine; I promise
That from that moment none shall frighten her
With the hateful veil." And when indignantly
I turned on him "And the betrothal, sir,
Already fixed with Leonora, that
Is a mere mock it seems, a promise given
To come for an hour of pastime one fair day
That may be broken for some light excuse,
Some merrier fooling coming in the way!
What pretty trifle have you on your tongue
To turn it daintily as a courtier should
To our mother and my uncle?" He laughed low.
"Leave it to me, child. They are my good friends,
And Leonora has a lovely face,
And, were she sister to my wife, might have
A pretty dower. Ask if they're content
When I have told them you are." Add to that
A hundred trifles not detected then
In their joint significance, which now summed up
Make evidence--well, for them or against?
Which shall I say? What matters it to me,
Except to show that torturing charge, tricked out
A bugbear for my conscience, meant no more
Than the noises nurses make behind the wall
To frighten children quiet in their beds?
So let that pass, it need not swell the score.
But other sins? the many, what of them?
No easy reckoning this. Too well I know
My youth was girlish-wayward, too well know
My heart fed too much on the things of earth:
I know that many follies, many faults,
Had scarred that early life that seems so like
An innocence in looking back on it:
But how to say "In this and this I sinned--
Here evil dashed the good--there all was evil,"
Seems as if, coming from a woodland path,
One should essay to chronicle the thorns
Set on the briar rose-trees, count the size
And order of the flint-stones by the way
Upon the moss-banks and the grassy rims.
They were there, one saw them, one remembers that,
But one thinks more of the roses.
Well but pride,
My sin of pride--which we of our old house,
Following its long traditions, arrogate
A prerogative to ourselves, a loyalty
Done to our race--my sin that most to me
Seemed virtue-like, that grasped so deep a part
Of my natural life that its mere name pronounced
Stands for a thousand separate confessions--
Let it take its fitting place, and be my shame
That was my ill-placed glory. Poor fond fool
To plume myself on having missed the grace
Of Heaven's high humility! and then
He made the fault so dear, he, when he said
He loved me for it--that still summer-day
When first was spoken what we knew so well
For long before, when a too welcome chance
Had lost us from the others laughing on
Along the olive slopes, and we two found
The boat upon the little silent lake
Left all alone, and stole it from its place,
And let it drift into the happy shade
Beneath the bank where the acacias pushed
Their boles into the water through the trails
Of creeping briony and red roses drooped
Lush sprays above my head. He said it then
When I, in the childishness of happy love,
Had whispered on his breast that question old
And meaningless as the song the linnet sings,
The question that glad lovers love to ask
And answer and hear answered: "Tell me, love,
What made you love me first?" "Perhaps it was,
My own proud Eva, that same queenly pride
Which, jesting, I have blamed you for, that pride
Which keeps you nobler-lived than other women."
"My own proud Eva," that was how he called me
In many a stolen whisper afterwards:
"My own proud darling"--and my idle heart
Was ever beating to the pleasant rhythm,
And I loved my pride because he loved it in me.
Oh! many and many sullen self-despises
And frettings at myself and weary moods
Of half-revolt and utter hopelessness,
When even penitence was tired away
And I was only angry, since have paid
The forfeit of those self-deceiving days;
And I have felt my closest being wrung
By the very chains I heaped on it myself
To bow it to the need; and I have striven
In twofold anguish, torn in my racked mind
Between the natural and the new-learned will;
And I have sickened at very victory
Loathing my lowliness. Ah me! those days
How long they were! how cruel! But, I thank
The grace of Heaven for it, I endured,
I overcame. My pride is crushed at length
Into the dust that fits it, and my foot
Presses its writhing neck; never again
Shall it rise up to chafe and weary me
With the old onslaughts.
Pride, yes; and, pride confessed,
One has confessed a humour over apt
To sudden scorns and high-flown discontents
And the petulance of disdain. But anger's self,
A deadly sin, is nothing more than these;
And there too am I guilty.
Little bird,
Flitting so daintily upon the sill,
Hast thou come to tell me with thy matin chirp
That all the day-world is astir? I know,
But I am fettered to my drowsy thoughts;
I cannot gladden to the sun like thee.
Chirp, chirp, how glad thou art. Do the dull nights
Seem long now in these autumn times? But then,
Birdie, thy days are never over long.
We cannot say so much, we the world's lords:
Often the weary never-ending days
Burden us helpless with their dragging weight.
Thou art happier than thou knowest--all the more
Because thou dost not know that thou art happy.
We never wear our happiness so light,
Always oppressed by our strong consciousness
Whose deeps lie so near pain.
Already gone?
Yes, fly, wee wanderer, back to thy blithe grove
Warm with the earliest sunshine mellowing
The curves of spreading tree-tops. Out of sight
So soon?--no, on that cypress.
What do I
Watching the idle rovings of a bird,
With vacant purpose?
I have thought too long,
I lose myself What wonder? In one night
To live back all one's youth--though mine was short.
And yet it seems a long long age of life
Remote by longer ages. Strange it is
That the brief exquisite mood of a deep bliss
Which, being lived, seemed to be some few hours,
Seems, being lost, as if a long life's whole
Had passed in it. 'Twas but a year or so,
Count it by days upon the calendar,
And now--
Oh living days! oh happy days!
Oh days adream with happiness!--adream--
Adream--I am with you--Ah yes--adream
I am with you

What was I pondering
Before this drowsy languor stole my will?
Let me remember.
Yes the sins and follies
Of my vain youth. But I had almost done--
Or had I? Where was I in the blurred page
Whose half-forgotten fragment-facts from days
That were no more all faults than all good deeds
I am bidden read in the dusk that time has made?
Ah me! how to bethink me? When there grows
The counterfeit of some large landscape known
In past familiar days upon that sense
Which seems an inward memory of the eye--
Grows, at the plainest even, half as if
One looked upon it with the former sight--
If one were bidden break the vivid whole
Into its several parts traced point by point,
Or more, if one were bidden duly note
The rocks that broke the smoothness of the lake,
Or the black fissures on the great snow-hills,
Or say the pools along the marshy wastes,
How the thought-picture would become perplexed
Into a shifting puzzle, and the sight
Would ache that vainly tried to scan by units.
Even so it seems to me when I essay
To singly look upon the marring flaws
That foiled my youth's best virtues, or on those
That of its evil made the blackest scars.
Weary, so weary of the effort! Nay
I will remember! Well, my girlish days
Were full of faults--were doubtless full of faults--
Were full of faults: but what were the faults' names?
I am forgetting what I seek--their names?
Why there was many a paltry selfishness--
Many no doubt, for I was often shamed
To be so much below the self I dreamed--
Only I cannot call them singly back.
And there were pettish quarrels, girlish-wise,
With one or other of the rest at home,
Oftenest with Leonora, though, I think,
We chose each other most, and she has kept
My memory dearest of them; she alone
Remembers my old name-day, comes to me,
As if it still were festival to me,
With flowers, and calls me Eva.
Does she guess,
I wonder, that I could have stolen her greatness?
Poor Leonora, would she have lost much?
Wife's sister to the prince instead of wife;
That dowry he designed her for amends,
To make her welcome to some simpler home--
Perhaps with love with it, such as we hoped
When we were lovers--Yes, perhaps with some one
Who could have taught her smiles: she only laughs.
I would I knew her happy now! She says
She is most happy: but she says she knows
Nothing worth sorrow.
Nothing! Nothing worth
The weeping out one's life for! Nothing worth
The wearying after in a waking dream
Of all one's days, the straining to one's heart
As a mother her one child, her one dead child,
Although a plague had stricken it and the end
Were her own dying! Nothing worth a sorrow
Dearer than any future joy could be,
Stronger than love, oh! longer lived than love,
Than love itself, a sorrow to be lived for
Liked love itself, to be one's closest life!
If only one were free to sorrow thus!
Oh to be left my sorrow for a while,
Only a little while! to weep at will!
Oh let me weep a while if but for shame
Because I cannot check the foolish passion,
Because I weep despite myself. Alas!
Oh Lord my helper, when shall I find rest?

How sweet those roses smell! Look, Angelo,
That cluster of red roses pictured back
From the still water. See! see! Catch that branch
By your left hand--the boat will drift away!
How the boat rocks! how it rocks! Am I ashore?
I thought I was in the boat with you. How it rocks!
Oh Angelo!
What is it? Where am I?
Who was it screamed? Was it I?
I have been dreaming--
How plain it was at first! We in the boat
On the still lake, just as we were that day,
The roses drooping on us, and, far spread
On the clear water, greenness of the trees.
A strangely real dream' And then the change--
The tossing waters I ashore alone
Watching--and then--oh! that white anguished face
Uplifting from the waters as they heaved
About him sinking!
Whence came such a dream?
He is with Giulia happy. I----
Am here
Vowed to the convent, vowed to Heavens service
And happy in the faith of Heaven's reward.
I have not quite forgotten Whose I am,
And in the waking day can call to mind
What higher lot is mine and be in it
In peace.
But yet I would I had not seen
That haggard face. I fear me many days
Will find it haunting me. It was too like
The look he gave me when our eyes last met,
When all was over, and there was for us
No farewell but that sudden chance-caught look
In a busy street, and then we had passed on.
The chapel bell at last. Never its sound
Has fallen kinder on my ear. Now comes
The rest of prayer; and so the day begins
Its round of holy duties, and my strength
Will grow again towards them. It will pass,
This querulous weakness with my weariness--
It has passed; I am strong; I am myself;
My God did but forsake me for a while.
He hears, He calls me to Him at the shrine.
He will forgive me, me whom He has chosen;
He will fold me in His love. Am I not His?
But yet I would I had not seen that face.





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