The great rude world was far away, And like a troubled vision lay Outside our thoughts; its cold deceits, The babble of its noisy streets, And all the selfish rivalry That courts and castles propagate Were alien to our new estate.— A fragment of propitious sky, Whereon a puff of cloud might lie, Through verdured boughs o’er-arching seen, And glimpses of the sea between Far stretches of majestic trees, Such peaceful sanctities as these Were our abiding joyance now.
Cheerily and with lifted brow Eugene led on, where tamaracs grew, And where tall elms their shadows threw Athwart a little glen wherein A virgin brook seemed glad to win The pressure of our thirsty lips. Pleasant it was to linger there And cool our fevered finger-tips In that pellucid stream and share The solace of the ocean breeze. For summer heats were now aglow, The fox sat down and took his ease, The hare moved purposeless and slow; But louder rang the blue jay’s scream, The woodpeck tapped the naked tree, Nor ceased the simple chickadee To twitter in the noonday beam.— My lover, wheresoe’er we strayed, Made search in every charmed nook, And angled in the winding brook For all sweet flowers that love the shade To twine for me a bridal braid. Pale yellow lilies, nursed by rocks Rifted and scarred by lightning shocks, Or earthquake; river buds and pinks, And modest snow-drops, pearly white, And lilies of the vale unite Their beauty in close-loving links Around a scented woodbine fair To coronate my dark brown hair. The fragile fern and clover sweet On that enchanted circlet meet; Young roses lent their blushing hues, Nor could the cedar leaf refuse With helmet flowers to intertwine Its glossy amplitude divine.— Emerging from that solemn wood, High on a rocky cliff we stood At set of sun; far, far away The splendors of departing day Upon the barren ocean lay.— There on that lone sea-beaten height, Investured in a golden light, Eugene, with looks half sad, whole sweet, Upon my brow the garland set, At once a chaplet and aigrette, And said: “Be crowned, my Marguerite! My own true soul, my ever dear Companion in this wilderness. Though hopeful still, I sometimes fear That days of darkness and distress May come to thee when woods are sere,— When it may baffle all my skill To guard thee from white winter’s chill;— But hence all raven-thoughts of ill, Let me believe that Nature will Relax her rigour, having caught The soft infection of those eyes In whose blue depths my image lies, Even as my soul, with love distraught, Like a lone star drowned in the sea, Is wholly drowned and lost in thee.— Love is our own essential being, Sole sovereign over utmost fate, Its own sufficient laws decreeing, Immortal and immaculate; And when this mild ethereal flame To mortal man was kindly given ’Twas surely meant by highest Heaven That never aught of evil name Should dare attempt to thwart its power.— Then let us, dearest, from this hour Defy the future, and pursue The unimagined pleasure due To such surpassing love as ours. One moment in thy folding arms Alone in these sequestered bowers; One throb of thy impassioned heart, Now speaking audibly to mine, And saying, ‘It were death to part;’ One honey-dew caress of thine, Out-sums a million rude alarms, Out-lives whole centuries that weigh On loveless souls, on sordid clay, That gravitate to ways of shame, And know love’s magic but by name.— These roseate skies will change their hue; This pomp of leaves when autumn lowers The windy ways of earth will strew; This aromatic crown of flowers, Made sacred now since worn by you, To-morrow will begin to fade.— But love, sweet spirit, linked as ours, By sad vicissitude o’erlaid, Endures, unchanged by any breath Of adverse fate, and surely will Life’s last inevitable chill Survive, and triumph over death.”— Thus, eloquent, the radiant youth, Like one inspired with sacred truth, Fair as Adonis, o’er me breathed The incense of pure love, and wreathed My heart in dewy dreams of bliss. Consenting Nature, pleased the while, Bestowed upon her outcast Isle The magic of a mother’s smile. Spent Sol impressed his warmest kiss On ocean’s brow; the wanton wind Went sighing up and down to find Meet objects for his soft embrace All things to amity inclined; Fierce bird and beast forebore to chase Their feeble prey, as if they felt Love’s universal breathings melt Their savage instincts; everywhere, Like mute enchantment in the air, This subtle permeating power Reigned sole. O, blest ambrosial hour! O, halcyon days that followed after, With music from my lute, and laughter, And song and jest, and such full measure Of secret love’s exhaustless treasure As gave to pain the wings of pleasure!—
So fled our summer dream, as flies An angel through cerulean skies On some good errand swiftly bent, So brief its stay that ere we wist, Gruff Autumn, garmented in mist. His courier winds before him sent, The which, equipped with sleet and hail, Beat down as with an iron flail The grandeur of the woods, and left Their naked solitudes bereft Of bird and flower. The trees stood stark And desolate against the dark Chaotic sky. The mighty sea Its billows hurled upon the shore As if resolved to over-pour And gulph our prison-house. Ah, me! All roofless now, save here and there A tall pine stretched its spear-shaped head Aloft into the gelid air; The hemlock, too, its beauty spread, A tent-like pyramid of green, Symbols of hope amid a scene Where hope grew pale at winter’s tread.
No more, along the sounding shore, In hushed voluptuous dells, no more, Nor on the perilous rock which gave Rude welcome to the climbing wave, Might we, in amplitude of joy, Our paradisal hours employ,— From green to gray, from gray to white, So rapidly the change came on, It seemed but the work of a single night And all our faery world was gone.— Down came the snow, compact, hard-driven By all the scourging blasts of heaven, Until, like clouds, dethroned and hurled Tumultuous to this nether world, Around the desert isle it lay, A rampart to the ocean’s spray.
Half hid where friendly pine trees spread Perpetual shelter overhead, Hugging a hillside lifted high Betwixt us and the arctic sky, Our cabin stood; a poor defence Against the mute omnipotence Of searching and insidious frost, Which, like a ghoul condemned and lost, The closeness of an inmate claimed;— But on the rustic hearthstone flamed Dry wood and pine-knots resinous: A ready and abundant hoard When days were long our hands had stored Against the season perilous; And good Nanette, ’twas her desire To feed the bickering tongues of fire That warned the dumb intruder hence.
When night fell thick, I loved to sit And watch the fire-gleams fall and flit On wooden walls and birch-bark ceiling, Among the densest shadows stealing, Till these, in folds and festoons golden, Like tapestry of castles olden, Shifted and fluttered free, revealing To fancy’s charmed and wiser vision Such fabrics as in looms elysian The angels weave; and thus our hut A palace seemed; and was it not More beautiful, illumed the while By dear Eugene’s adoring smile, Than many a royal chamber where, Concealed amid the gloss and glare, A thousand hateful evils are?—
Such fare as woodland wilds afford, Supplied our ever-cheerful board; Nor such alone; the salt sea wave Its tributary largess gave, All that our lenten wants might crave.
Slow crept the whitened months, so slow— I sometimes felt I never more Should see the pretty roses blow, Or tread on aught but endless snow, And listen to the nightly roar Of tempest and the ocean flow. Weird voices, woven with the wind, Riding on darkness often came And syllabled the buried name Of Roberval, which, like a hearse, Bore inward to my palsied mind The ghost of his inhuman curse.
Was it sick fancy, sore misled, That to my shuddering spirit said?— “Those sounds that shake the midnight air, Are threats of Shapes that will not spare Your trespass on their fief accurst.” “Hush, hush, my love,” Eugene would say, “That cry which o’er our cabin burst, Came from the owls, perched royally Among the pine-tops; you but heard The language of some beast or bird; The mooing of a mother bear, An hungered in her frozen lair; The laugh and mooing of the loon That welcometh the rising moon. The howling of the wolves you hear, In chase of some unhappy deer, Impeded in its desperate flight By deep and thickly crusted snows, O’er which its lighter-footed foes Pursue like shadows of the night. That lengthened groan, that fearful shriek Was but the grinding stress and creak Of aged trees; they seem to feel The wrench of storms, and make appeal For mercy; in their ducts and cells The sap, which is their life-blood, swells When frosts prevail and bursts asunder With sharp report its prison walls; Then cease, beloved, to fear and wonder For all these harmless peals and calls. In sweet assurance rest, love, rest Thy head on this devoted breast, And dream sweet dreams; the gentle spring Will come anon, and birds will sing As sweetly as they sang last year; And shall I not be ever near To share with thee the murmuring Of waking life? the humble bee Will drone again as blissfully As when from flower to flower he went And to the choral symphony His basso horn serenely lent.”— My fears were laid; I ceased to think; Athirst and eager still to drink The nectar of his speech.
How oft, If he but chanced to hear me sigh When wild winds blew, or when the soft And flaky harvest of the sky Descended silent, he would sit Under that snow-thatched roof and tell Such marvellous tales of mirth and wit, They held me like a wizard’s spell. Or else some poet’s plaintive verse That breathed soft vows of youth and maiden, With love-begotten sorrow laden, In twilight tones he would rehearse; And whilst the rhythmic measure flowed From those attuned lips, my breast With trepidation heaved and glowed, For in such guise was well expressed The master-passion’s undertone, Or happy or disconsolate, Of many a lover’s wayward fate That bore some semblance to our own.