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(Excerpt)
IN Mount Valerien’s chestnut wood | |
| The Chapel of the Hermits stood; | |
| And thither, at the close of day, | |
| Came two old pilgrims, worn and gray. | |
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| One, whose impetuous youth defied | 5 |
| The storms of Baikal’s wintry side, | |
| And mused and dreamed where tropic day | |
| Flamed o’er his lost Virginia’s bay. | |
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| His simple tale of love and woe | |
| All hearts had melted, high or low;— | 10 |
| A blissful pain, a sweet distress, | |
| Immortal in its tenderness. | |
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| Yet, while above his charméd page | |
| Beat quick the young heart of his age, | |
| He walked amidst the crowd unknown, | 15 |
| A sorrowing old man, strange and lone. * * * * * | |
| Who sought with him, from summer air, | |
| And field and wood, a balm for care; | |
| And bathed in light of sunset skies | |
| His tortured nerves and weary eyes? | 20 |
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| His fame on all the winds had flown; | |
| His words had shaken crypt and throne; | |
| Like fire, on camp and court and cell | |
| They dropped, and kindled as they fell. * * * * * | |
| Forth from the city’s noise and throng, | 25 |
| Its pomp and shame, its sin and wrong, | |
| The twain that summer day had strayed | |
| To Mount Valerien’s chestnut shade. | |
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| To them the green fields and the wood | |
| Lent something of their quietude, | 30 |
| And golden-tinted sunset seemed | |
| Prophetical of all they dreamed. | |
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| The hermits from their simple cares | |
| The bell was calling home to prayers, | |
| And, listening to its sound, the twain | 35 |
| Seemed lapped in childhood’s trust again. | |
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| Wide open stood the chapel door; | |
| A sweet old music, swelling o’er | |
| Low prayerful murmurs, issued thence,— | |
| The Litanies of Providence! | 40 |
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| Then Rousseau spake: “Where two or three | |
| In His name meet, He there will be!” | |
| And then, in silence, on their knees | |
| They sank beneath the chestnut-trees. | |
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| As to the blind returning light, | 45 |
| As daybreak to the Arctic night, | |
| Old faith revived; the doubts of years | |
| Dissolved in reverential tears. | |
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| That gush of feeling overpast, | |
| “Ah me!” Bernardin sighed at last, | 50 |
| “I would thy bitterest foes could see | |
| Thy heart as it is seen of me! | |
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| “No church of God hast thou denied; | |
| Thou hast but spurned in scorn aside | |
| A base and hollow counterfeit, | 55 |
| Profaning the pure name of it! | |
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| “With dry dead moss and marish weeds | |
| His fire the western herdsman feeds, | |
| And greener from the ashen plain | |
| The sweet spring grasses rise again.” * * * * * | 60 |
| So speaking, through the twilight gray | |
| The two old pilgrims went their way. | |
| What seeds of life that day were sown | |
| The heavenly watchers knew alone. | |
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| Time passed, and Autumn came to fold | 65 |
| Green Summer in her brown and gold; | |
| Time passed, and Winter’s tears of snow | |
| Dropped on the grave-mound of Rousseau. | |
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| “The tree remaineth where it fell, | |
| The pained on earth is pained in hell!” | 70 |
| So priestcraft from its altars cursed | |
| The mournful doubts its falsehood nursed. | |
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| Ah! well of old the Psalmist prayed, | |
| “Thy hand, not man’s, on me be laid!” | |
| Earth frowns below, Heaven weeps above, | 75 |
| And man is hate, but God is love! | |
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| No hermits now the wanderer sees, | |
| Nor chapel with its chestnut-trees; | |
| A morning dream, a tale that ’s told, | |
| The wave of change o’er all has rolled. | 80 |
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| Yet lives the lesson of that day; | |
| And from its twilight cool and gray | |
| Comes up a low, sad whisper, “Make | |
| The truth thine own, for truth’s own sake.” * * * * * | |
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