Ir was the deep mid-noon; the golden haze
Of waning Autumn slept upon the hills,
And silent meadows, and broad dusty ways
Of busy life. The little, wandering rills,
That all the Summer long had wound unseen
Among the tall, rank sedges, and between
Close banks of waving ferns, with gurgling song,
In the soft, yellow light now purled along —
Bright, silvery veins, upon whose twinkling breast
The gay-voiced blackbird laved its ebon vest,
And burnished gadfly sported. Glistening showers
Of gold and crimson leaves, like waves of flowers,
From rustling birch and gorgeous maple fell,
And, over hillside, lawn and quiet dell,
With the sad breath of fading blossoms blent,
Entered my lattice, on the genial breeze
From woodlands borne. Low sounds, the hum of bees
Amid my garden blooms; the murmuring rush
Of whispering locusts, and the trembling gush
Of falling streams, in mingled cadence stole
Upon my senses, waking in my soul
A strange, deep yearning for the hills and woods;
Those lone, mysterious, voiceless solitudes
Where only God is heard, and, all apart
From the world's strife, His voice may fill our heart.
O, not in vain the voices of the rills;
The wild-leaf scents; the sunshine on the hills;
The crimson glory of the falling leaf;
The woodland shadows, wooed me to a brief,
Blest hour of meditation 'mid the halls
Of holy Nature's temple. To her calls
My heart responded with the glad refrain,
"I come!" "I come!" My hand forgot its train
Of household toils, and yielding to the spell
That outward drew my feet, I sought the dell
Where the bright wing of fancy yet once more
Might plume itself, and upward, onward soar.
Dim closed the wildwood round me; whisp'ring pines
Reared their tall shafts with shadowy summits crowned
Far up the listening azure. Tangled vines,
This way and that upclomb, had coyly wound.
Their clinging arms, in wild, fantastic shapes,
Among the trees, festooning them with grapes
And starry tufts of down, like airy wreaths
Of purple smoke, and slender gauzy sheaths
Of ripened seeds; a rich, o'erarching frame
Of tyrian purple, set in green and flame.
Gorgeous the show, though through the bowery glades
Of swaying cedars, whose cathedral shades
Scarce ray of sunshine pierced, there brooding lay
A realm of twilight, sombre, deep and gray.
Where the soft sunshine on a mossy bed,
Through the close, interlacing branches, shed
A dim, but gladsome light, beneath the trees
I sat me down to rest. The fitful breeze
Swept through their boughs, invoking thence a sound
That softly trembled on the air around
Like wailing organ-strains, which, far and faint,
The parting soul of some sweet dying saint
To peace serenest soothed. The cushat heard,
Amid the ash-tree sleeping, and it stirred
Its soft-plumed head, and low, in measured time,
Poured out a dreamy and responsive chime
Of mournfullest melody. The whispering grass
Bent down to hear the sweet, sad murmur pass,
And sighed response. Harmonious visions filled
My spell-bound spirit, and my heart was stilled
To all unwonted peace.
The sunlight round me, while I sat and dreamed,
And watched the quivering leaves, and mountain bee
Darting from flower to flower, from tree to tree,
Till, wrapt entranced in the dim mazy seas
Of vagrant fancies and old memories,
I lost the sense of present things. My soul
Back to another and long-vanished goal
Whose mournful histories, like some haunting spell,
Around my spirit ever seem to dwell
Was drawn. The forest-music took a tone
Of other days. Fair shapes, long ages gone,
In sad procession slow before me came.
The towering trees no longer were the same,
But the gray pillars of a cloistral pile
In those far ages reared. Each forest aisle
Became a cell, whence voices of despair,
In the deep night-hours, rose to God, in prayer
For peace which came not; for some sign, some word,
Telling their shrieks of penance had been heard;
That not in vain the ashes had been shed
By fierce Remorse upon its prostrate head;
That not in vain the sackcloth had been worn,
Or quivering flesh by cruel scourges torn.
Through the thick beechen boughs above my head
Soft fleecy clouds looked down, that, as they fled
And their white wings along the sky unfurled,
Seemed the sweet faces of pale, gentle nuns,
Gazing through convent bars, upon a world
Which they no more might enter. Hapless ones!
In their young innocence, too fondly dreaming
That God beneath the cloister's solemn seeming
Was ever found; that they who sought Him there,
Escaped the world and all its weary care,
Its burning griefs and ills, to find a peace
Serene as Heaven's that never more would cease.
O, convent-world! can Heaven approval smile
Upon a life so false, so full of guile
As thine from e'er of old hath been? O, hearts,
How many! wounded by the poisoned darts
Of this world's treachery, have sought the gloom
Of thy drear walls, within thy living tomb
A little while to hide the burning wo
That knows no cure, no solace here below,
And then to die, all unlamented, save
By the hoarse bell that tolls above their grave!
O, cloister-life! as thus I muse, mine ear
Seems thy low vesper chimes to faintly hear,
While a sad tale of an Imperial wife,
Who ended, 'mid thy solitudes, her life
In broken-hearted wo, comes back to me.
On the dim walls of fading memory
Her picture hangs; and, gazing sadly down,
Her soft, sweet eyes are fixed upon my own!
Fixed with a look whose mournful meaning seems
Too deep for aught that lives but in our dreams.
Alone she sits, within the graceful bower
Her own fair hands, in some far-vanished hour,
Had helped to deck. Around her lovely form,
Through rich-stained windows, many-hued and warm,
Falls the soft light from that cerulean dome
That arches over her adopted home.
Rich silken draperies, sweeping to the floor,
With gold and silver broideries covered o'er,
Droop betwixt marble-columns pure and white,
And hide the oaken wainscot from the sight.
O, fair that bower, where not a step she takes
But falls on broidery that no echo wakes!
Yet false-tongued, faithless handmaids wait her call,
And not a friend hath she among them all.
A palace-home! yet here she sits and weeps,
And sighs and ponders all the day, and steeps
The silken broidery on her lap in tears.
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