Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/843

1858.] Camille. 835 Which, through unmarked removes, Should draw me upward, even as it behooves One whose deep spring-tides from His heart descend.

To swell some vast refrain beyond the sun, The very west breathed music from its sod; And night and day in concord antiphon Rolled off through windless arches in the broad Abyss.—Thou saw'st I, too, Would in my place have blent accord as true, And justified this great enshrining, God!

Dreams!—Stain it on the bending amethyst, That one who came with visions of the Prime For guide somehow her radiant pathway missed, And wandered in the darkest gulf of Time. No deep divine henceforth Stood royal in its far-related worth; No god, in truth, might heal the wounded chime

Oh, how? I darkly ask,—and if I dare Take up a thought from this tumultuous street To the forgotten Silence soaring there Above the hiving roof, its calm depths meet My glance with no reply. Might I go back and spell this mystery In the new stillness at my mother's feet,—

I would recall with importunings long That so sad soul, once pierced as with a knife, And cry, Forgive! Oh, think Youth's tide was strong, And the full torrent, that from brain and life, Plunged through the heart, until It rocked to madness, and the o'erstrained will Grew wild, then weak, in the despairing strife!

And ever I think, What warning voice should call, Or show me lane from fool, with tedious art, When love—the perfect instinct, flower of all Divinest potencies of choice, whose part Was set 'mid stars and flame To keep the inner place of God—became A blind and ravening fever of the heart?

I laugh with scorn that men should think them praised In women's love,—chance-flung in weary hours, By sickly fire to bloated worship raised!— O long-lost dream, so sweet of vernal flowers!

Wherein I slept, it seemed, 

And gave a gift of queenly mark!—I dreamed Of Passion's joy aglow in rounded powers.