“But soon her fire to ashes burned;
Her beauty changed to haggardness;
Her golden hair to silver turned;
The hour came of her last caress.
“At midnight from her lonely bed
She rose, and said, ‘I have had my will.’
The old ragged robe she donned, and fled
Back to the convent on the hill.”
She blessed, as she ran thither, the comfortable convent laws by which
nuns who had sinned as she had done were buried alive. But I must copy
the remaining stanzas, for no condensation can do justice to their
tender, piteous, triumphant charm:—
“Like tired bells chiming in their sleep,
The wind faint peals of laughter bore;
She stopped her ears and climbed the steep,
And thundered at the convent door.
“It opened straight: she entered in,
And at the Wardress’ feet fell prone:
‘I come to purge away my sin;
Bury me, close me up in stone.’
“The Wardress raised her tenderly;
She touched her wet and fast-shut eyes:
‘Look, sister; sister, look at me;
Look; can you see through my disguise?’
“She looked, and saw her own sad face,
And trembled, wondering, ‘Who art thou?’
‘God sent me down to fill your place:
I am the Virgin Mary now.’
“And with the word, God’s mother shone:
The wanderer whispered, ‘Mary, Hail!’
The vision helped her to put on
Bracelet and fillet, ring and veil.
“‘You are sister to the mountains now,
And sister to the day and night;
Sister to God.’ And on the brow
She kissed her thrice, and left her sight.
“While dreaming in her cloudy bed,
Far in the crimson orient land,
On many a mountain’s happy head
Dawn lightly laid her rosy hand.”
“A Ballad of a Nun” seems to me Mr. Davidson’s crowning achievement;
yet “A Ballad of Heaven” and “A Ballad of Hell” are scarcely less
striking. In “A Ballad of Heaven” there is a musician who works for
years at one great composition. The world ignores him. His wife and
child, clothed in rags, are starving in their windy garret; but he does
not know it, for he dwells in the strange, far heaven of his music.
“Wistful he grew, but never feared;
For always on the midnight skies
His rich orchestral score appeared,
In stars and zones and galaxies.”
He turns, at last, from his completed score to seek the sympathy of
love; but wife and child are lying dead. He gathers to his breast the
stark, wan wife with the baby skeleton in her arms.
“‘You see you are alive,’ he cried.
He rocked them gently to and fro.
‘No, no, my love, you have not died;
Nor you, my little fellow; no.’
“Long in his arms he strained his dead,
And crooned an antique lullaby;
Then laid them on the lowly bed,
And broke down with a doleful cry.”
Then his own heart broke, at last, and he, too, was dead.
“Straightway he stood at heaven’s gate
Abashed, and trembling for his sin:
I trow he had not long to wait
For God came out and led him in.
“And then there ran a radiant pair.
Ruddy with haste and eager-eyed,
To meet him first upon the stair—
His wife and child, beatified.
“God, smiling, took him by the hand,
And led him to the brink of heaven:
He saw where systems whirling stand,
Where galaxies like snow are driven.”
And lo! it was to his own music that the very spheres were moving.
“A Ballad of Hell” tells the story of a woman’s love and a woman’s
courage. Her lover writes her that he must go to prison, unless he
marries, the next day, his cousin whom he abhors. There is no refuge
but in death; and by her love he conjures her to kill herself at
midnight, and meet him, though it must be in Hell. She waited till
sleep had fallen on the house. Then out into the night she went,
hurried to the trysting oak, and there she drove her dagger home into
her heart, and fell on sleep. She woke in Hell. The devil was quite
ready to welcome her; but she answered him only—
“‘I am young Malespina’s bride;
Has he come hither yet?’”
But Malespina had turned coward, when the supreme test came, and he was
to marry his cousin on the morrow. For long, and long, she would not
believe; but when long waiting brought certainty, at last, she cried—
“‘I was betrayed. I will not stay.’”