Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

Behind the crypt the altar hung with black;

And cúrtained black the doors, lucárnes and windows;
A single dím lamp from the high vault burning.
The tolling ceased as entering the chapel

The sisters ranged themselves in triple file
Half-moón shaped round the entrance of the crypt,
The kneeling Agatha and open coffin,

In each right hand still burning bright the taper.
"Selected child of God," then said the prior
Beside the bishop standing in the midst
And putting into the maid's trembling hand
The véry crucifix Saint Ursula

Préssed to her lips upon her martyr day,
"If of its own free will thine heart accepts
The words thou now shalt hear the bishop utter
Words which for ever from the world divide thee,
From father, mother, friends, and house and home,
Brother and sister, all the joys of life

Swear to the words and kiss the holy rood."

"Thou swear'st," then said the bishop, "that till death Thou wilt be faithful to the mother church,

That to the letter thou 'lt observe the rules
And órdinances of Saint Ursula,

Obéy the lady abbess of this convent

In preference to thy father and thy mother,
And love this sisterhood more than thy sisters,
Swear'st that thou 'lt live in chastity perpetual,
Seclusion, poverty and self-abasement,
And in all things conduct thee as becometh
The bride of Christ, the adópted of the Lord;
And as thou keep'st this oath or break'st it, so
Máy thy soul when thou diest ascend to heaven
Thére to live éver in the joy of the Lord,
Ór be thrust down to hell to dwell for ever

In torment with the enemies of God."

"I swear," said Agatha, and kissed the rood;
Then, taking each a hand, the attendant sisters
Upraised her from her knees and one of them
Drawing the góld hoop from her finger dropped it
Ínto th' offértory held by the other;

Néxt from her head they undid the long white veil,
And loosed and lét upon her shoulders fall

Her gólden lócks, then in their arms both raised her
And laid her stretched at fúll length in the coffin,
And the pall over her and the coffin spread,
Leaving the head bare, and beyond the edge
Of the coffin the dishévelled gold locks hanging;
Then one of them the lócks held while the bishop
Clean sheared them from the head, saying same time:
"As these locks never to the head return,

So thoú returnest never to the world."

Out of the coffin then the two attendants

Raised her together, and the long black veil

Threw over her, head, neck and shoulders covering
Dówn to her waist behind; the bishop then
Námed her Euphemia, and upon her finger
Pútting the nuptial ring and on her head

The nuptial crown, pronounced her Christ's affianced,
The Lord's own spouse now and for ever more,
And, having given into her hand the attested

Act of Profession and the Rules of the Order,

Rósary and prayerbook, raised both hands and blessed her

And både her go in peace; then the abbess kissed her

And all the sisters kissed her one by one;

And having sung a hymn, all left the chapel:

The novices before, the prior following,

And then the bishop, next the lady abbess

Heading the black veils, with the last of whom

And youngest, tottering walked the new-professed,
The white veils last, the great bell again tolling.
The cloister court they round and up the stair
To the refectory and collation frugal:

Sausage and cheese and bread, and each one glass
Of Rüdesheimer four years in the cellar.

The prior and bishop some short quarter hour
Converse of things indifferent with the abbess;
Take leave; the wicket again opens, closes;
The patter of the mules' hoofs dies away;
Eách to her séparate cell the nuns retire,

And once more still as death 's Saint Ursula's cloister.
Next day a messenger conveys the parents

Áll of their daughter that they now might claim:
The golden ringlets sheared off by the bishop;
And in one narrow cell from that day forth,
Strictest and hóliest of Saint Ursula's nuns,

In pénitence and prayer lived Agatha,
Except when morning, noon, or evening bell
Called her to chapel, or her daily walk

She took the court round or the high-walled garden,

Ór at long intervals in a sister's presence

Spoke some short moments through the parlour grating
With some once deár friend of her former world.

So forty years she lived and so she died,

And other Agathas walking where she walked

Her náme read on a flag beneath their feet

As from the court they turn into the chapel.

Begun while walking from RIED to SANCT ANTON on the ADLERBERG (German TYROL), Sept. 4 5, 1854; finished at TEUFEN in Canton APPENZELL, Sept. 12, 1854.

I LIKE the Belgian cleanliness and comfort,
The Bélgian liberty of thought and action,
The ancient Belgian cities, full of churches
With pointed windows and long Gothic aisles
And vócal steeples that pour every hour
Dówn from the cloúds their lárklike melody;
I love too the soft Belgian languages,
Walloon and Flemish, and the Belgian song,
And Bélgium's pictures chiefly thine, Van Eyck!.
Unéqualled colorist, and first who dipped
In oil the pencil. But I like not all,
Múch though I like in Belgium; I like not
Its hill-less, smoóth, unvariegated landscape,
Where even the very rivers seem to languish ;
Still less I like its parallel, straight-cut roads
Where seldom but to telescope-armed eye
Discernible the further end or turning;
And leást of all I like him whóm Cologne,
Proúd of a little, fain would call her own,

Though foreign-born, him of the broad, slouched hat,
The painter who shades red and with red streaks
And bloody blotches daubs the sprawling limbs
Óf his fat Venuses and Medicis,

Susánnas, Ariadnes and Madonnas,

Álways except his sweetheart with the straw hat,

For whose sake I 'd forgive his sins though doubled But other lands invite me, farewell Belgium!

Thrice wélcome, Holland! refuge, in old times,
Of pérsecuted virtue, wisdom, learning;
Mighty Rhine-delta, I admire thy ports
Fúll of tall másts, wayfarers of both oceans;
Thy cabinets replenished with the riches.
Of either Ind; thy dikes, canals, and sluices,
And térritory from the deép sea won
Bý thy hard toil and skill and perseverance;
Bút I like not thy smug, smooth-sháven faces,
Sleék, methodistic hair, and white cravats,

And swallowtailed black coats, and trowsers black;
Still less I like the odour of thy streets

Ére by kind winter frózen, and the far more

Than Jewish eagerness with which thou graspest
At évery pound or penny fairly earned,

[blocks in formation]

Eách of the other, a Northern and a Southern :
Stúrdy the one, and stiffnecked and reserved,
Caútious, suspicious, economical, prudent,

Indústrious, indefatigable, patient,

Stúdious and méditative and with art's

And literature's most noble spoils enriched,
That raised, three hundred years ago, revolt's
Audácious standard against mother church
And from that day has lived and florished fair
Without the help of Pope, Bull, or Indulgence,
Ánd in its naked, shrineless temples worshipped
Its unsubstantial notion of a God.

« PredošláPokračovať »