SISTER BEATRICE (A.D. uncertain).
THIS is the metre Columbian. The soft-flowing trochees and dactyls,
Blended with fragments spondaic, and here and there an iambus,
Syllables often sixteen, or more or less, as it happens,
Difficult always to scan, and depending greatly on accent,
Being a close imitation, in English, of Latin hexameters—
Fluent in sound, and avoiding the stiffness of commoner blank verse,
Having the grandeur and flow of America's mountains and rivers,
Such as no bard could achieve in a mean little island like England;
Oft, at the end of a line, the sentence dividing abruptly
Breaks, and in accents mellifluous follows the thoughts of the author.
I.
In the old miracle days, in Rome the abode of the saintly,
To and fro in a room of her sacred conventual dwelling,
Clad in garments of serge, with a veil in the style of her Order,
Mass-book and rosary too, with a bunch of keys at her girdle,
Walk'd, with a pensive air, Beatrice the Carmelite sister.
Fair of aspect was she, but a trifle vivacious and worldly,
And not altogether cut out for a life of devout contemplation.
More of freedom already had she than the rest of the sisters,
For hers was the duty to ope the gates of the convent, and take in
Messages, parcels, et cetera, from those who came to the wicket.
Ever and often she paused to gaze on the face of Our Lady,
Limn'd in a picture above by some old pre-Raphaelite Master;
Then would she say to herself (because there was none else to talk to),
"Why should I thus be immured, when people outside are enjoying
Thousands of sights and scenes, while I'm not allowed to behold them,
Thousands of joys and of changes, while I am joyless and changeless?
No, I can bear it no longer. I'll hasten away from the Convent:
Now is the time, for all's quiet; there's no one to see or to catch me."
So resolving at length, she took off her habit monastic,
And promptly array'd herself in smuggled secular garments;
Then on the kneeling-desk she laid down the keys, in a safeplace,
Where some one or other, or somebody else, would certainly find them.
"Take thou charge of these keys, blest Mother," then murmured Beatrice,
"And guard all the nuns in this holy but insupportable building."
And as she spoke these words, the eyes of the picture were fasten'd
With mournful expression upon her, and tears could be seen on the canvas;
Little she heeded, however, her thoughts had played truant before her,
Then stole she out of the portal, and never once looking behind her,
Wrapp'd in an ample cloak, and further concealed by the darkness,
Out through the streets of the city Beatrice quickly skedaddled.
II
Out in the world went Beatrice, her cell was left dark and deserted;
Scarce had she gone, when lo! with wonderment be it related—
Down from her canvas and frame, there stepp'd the blessed Madonna,
Took up the keys and the raiment Beatrice had quitted, and wore them,
Also assuming the face and figure of her who was absent;
Became in appearance a nun, so that none could discover the difference.
Save that the sisters agreed that Beatrice the portress was growing
Better and better, as one who aspired to canonization;
Daily abounding in grace, a pattern to all in the convent;
Till it would not have surprised them to see a celestial halo
Gather around her head, and pinions spring from her shoulders,
That, when too good for this world, she might fly away to a better.
Her post was below her deserts, and so by promotion they made her
Mistress of all the novices seeking religious instruction.
Such was her great success in that tender and beautiful office,
Her pupils all bloomed into saints, and some of the very first water.
III.
Many a day had pass'd since Beatrice escaped from the convent,
Much had she seen of the world, and its wickedness greatly distress'd her;
Oft she repented her act, and long'd to return, yet she dared not;
Oft was determined to go, still she "stood on the order of going."
Thus it at last occurr'd that her convent's secular agent
Entered one day, in the house where the truant sister was staying,
But changed as she was in appearance, he did not know her from Adam;
Whilst he in his clerical garb was to her a familiar figure.
"Now I shall learn," thought she, "what they say of my flight and my absence."
And so she eagerly asked of the nuns and of sister Beatrice,
As of a friend she had known when living near to the convent.
"Truly," the factor replied, "She is still the pride of our sisters,
Favourite too of the abbess, and worthy of all our affection.
Would there were more of her kind in some houses monastic I know of,"
Puzzled and rather distress'd, then answer'd the truant religieuse,
"She whom I speak of, alas! was less of a saint than a sinner,
She fled from the veil and the cell, so surely you speak of another?"
"Not in the least, my child," the secular agent responded;
"Sister Beatrice, the saint-like, did not run away from the cloister,
Mistress is she of the novices. Why should she go? Stuff and nonsense!"
"What can it mean?" thought Beatrice, "and who is my double and namesake?"
So when the agent was gone, resolved she would settle the question,
Off to the convent she went, and knocked at the portal familiar,
Ask'd for the sister Beatrice, was shown to the parlour and found a
Counterpart of herself, as she was in her days of seclusion.
Down on her knees went Beatrice—the why and the wherefore she knew not.
"Welcome, my daughter, again," said her double, the blessed Madonna;
"Now I restore you your keys, your robe, and your other belongings,
Adding the excellent name and promotion I've won in your likeness;
Be you a nun as before, but more pious; farewell, take my blessing."
Speaking, she melted away in the holy pre-Raphaelite picture.
Again was Beatrice "herself," like Richard the third, à la Shakespeare,
Growing in grace from that day, and winning the glory of Saintship;
While each of the pupils she taught, went to heaven as surely as she did.
Such is the metre Columbian, but where is the bard who devised it?
Tenderest he of the poets who wrote in the tongue of (New) England,
Where the minstrel who sang of "Evangeline," also "Miles Standish?"
Alas! he will never again pour forth his effusions pathetic,
But his name and his fame endure, and this characteristic measure
In honour of him I adopt, without any thought of burlesquing.
Thus on the ear its cadence, like sounds from the labouring ocean,
Breaks, and in accents mellifluous follows the thoughts of the author.
Lays of the Saintly, by Walter Parke (Vizetelly & Co.), London, 1882.
Charles Wolfe.
The Reverend Charles Wolfe, who was born in Dublin in 1791, has earned literary immortality by one short poem, and that copied with considerable closeness from a prose account of the incident to which it refers. Reading in the Edinburgh Annual Register a description of the death and burial of Sir John Moore, the young poet turned it into verse with such sublime pathos, such taste and skill, that his poem has obtained imperishable fame in our literature.
Mr. Wolfe also produced a few other poems of unquestionable grace and pathos, but nothing approaching the beauty of his immortal ode. He was, for a time, curate of Ballyclog, in Tyrone, and afterwards of Donoughmore. His arduous duties in a large, wild, and very scattered parish left him little leisure to cultivate the muses, and soon told on his delicate constitution. He died of consumption on 21st February, 1823, at the early age of 32, and thus the assertion of his detractors that he produced nothing else of sufficient merit to show that he could have written the ode in question, may be easily met by the two pleas—firstly, that he had other duties to perform; and, secondly, that his career was too brief to admit of many, or great, performances.
The battle of Corunna was fought on January 16, 1809, by the British army, about 15,000 strong, under Sir John Moore, against a force of about 20,000 Frenchmen.
The British troops had just safely accomplished a retreat to the coast in the face of a superior force, and were on the point of embarking, when the French attacked; the enemy was repulsed, but the British loss was very great, and Sir John Moore, who was struck on the left shoulder by a cannon ball, died, much lamented by his troops. His body was removed at midnight to the citadel of Corunna, and a grave was dug for him on the ramparts by a party of the 9th Regiment. No coffin could be procured, and the officers of his staff wrapped the body, dressed as it was, in a military cloak and blankets. The interment was hastened, for firing was heard, and the officers feared that if a serious attack were made, they should be ordered away, and not allowed to pay him their last duty. The embarkation of the troops took place next day, under the command of Sir David Baird, who had also been wounded in the fight.
The following is what Lord Byron correctly termed, "The most perfect Ode in the language":—