SONNET.
O Love! thou art the soul’s fixed star, whose light— A rapture felt through all the rolling years,— Absorbs with silent touch the mourner’s tears, A guide, a glory through our mortal night;— All other passions, be they dark or bright, All high desires are but thy subject spheres, And captive servitors, whose pathway veers, Obedient to thine all-pervading might;— And therefore I no hesitation make In choosing thee, a theme accounted old, Yet ever young, and for poor Marguerite’s sake I trust some kind remembrance to awake That shall in tenderest clasp her story hold, Even as a rose a drop of dew doth fold.
MARGUERITE
OR THE ISLE OF DEMONS.
The interior of a Convent in France: Group of Nuns listening to Marguerite narrating her adventure.
1545.
Part I.
You ask me, Sisters, to relate The story of the wanton fate That over sea, with dole and strife And love and hate enthralled my life, Entwined with his, whose gentle eyes, That never lost their winsome smile, Illumed for me those sullen skies Which canopy the haunted Isle, A tale so wild, I pray you think, May ill beseem and prove amiss For such a hallowed place as this; A chain it is whose every link Is rusted with some earthly stain, The which you may esteem profane And from its hapless wearer shrink, I would not, Heaven knows, offend The sanctity of sinless ears, Nor vex the pious soul that hears Good angels on soft wings descend, Illumined, from the starry spheres, To tread these cloistered aisles and bend O’er dreaming couches lily pure. But since your suffrance makes secure, And since you kindly deign assent, And graciously with eager look Dispel the fluttering fears that shook My contrite heart, I am content.