TO HER.
Out of the glowing heart of the torrent of glory and light,
At the foot of Jehovah’s throne where the angels stand afar,
Each on a seistron of gold repeating the prayers of the night,
Put up for each by his star.
Out from the cherubim choir a bright-haired Angel springs,
Veiling the glory of God that dwells on a dazzling brow,
Leaving the courts of heaven to sink upon silver wings
Down to our world below.
God looked in pity on earth, and the Angel, reading His thought,
Came down to lull the pain of the mighty spirit at strife,
Reverent bent o’er the maid, and for age left desolate brought
Flowers of the springtime of life.
Bringing a dream of hope to solace the mother’s fears,
Hearkening unto the voice of the tardy repentant cry,
Glad as angels are glad, to reckon Earth’s pitying tears,
Given with alms of a sigh.
One there is, and but one, bright messenger sent from the skies
Whom earth like a lover fain would hold from the heav’nward flight;
But the angel, weeping, turns and gazes with sad, sweet eyes
Up to the heaven of light.
Not by the radiant eyes, not by the kindling glow
Of virtue sent from God, did I know the secret sign,
Nor read the token sent on a white and dazzling brow
Of an origin divine.
Nay, it was Love grown blind and dazed with excess of light,
Striving and striving in vain to mingle Earth and Heaven,
Helpless and powerless against the invincible armor bright
By the dread archangel given.
Ah! be wary, take heed, lest aught should be seen or heard
Of the shining seraph band, as they take the heavenward way;
Too soon the Angel on Earth will learn the magical word
Sung at the close of the day.
Then you shall see afar, rifting the darkness of night,
A gleam as of dawn that spread across the starry floor,
And the seaman that watch for a sign shall mark the track of their flight,
A luminous pathway in Heaven and a beacon for evermore.
“Do you read the riddle?” said Amélie, giving M. du Châtelet a coquettish glance.
“It is the sort of stuff that we all of us wrote more or less after we left school,” said the Baron with a bored expression—he was acting his part of arbiter of taste who has seen everything. “We used to deal in Ossianic mists, Malvinas and Fingals and cloudy shapes, and warriors who got out of their tombs with stars above their heads. Nowadays this poetical frippery has been replaced by Jehovah, angels, seistrons, the plumes of seraphim, and all the paraphernalia of paradise freshened up with a few new words such as ‘immense, infinite, solitude, intelligence’; you have lakes, and the words of the Almighty, a kind of Christianized Pantheism, enriched with the most extraordinary and unheard-of rhymes. We are in quite another latitude, in fact; we have left the North for the East, but the darkness is just as thick as before.”
“If the ode is obscure, the declaration is very clear, it seems to me,” said Zéphirine.
“And the archangel’s armor is a tolerably thin gauze robe,” said Francis.
Politeness demanded that the audience should profess to be enchanted with the poem; and the women, furious because they had no poets in their train to extol them as angels, rose, looked bored by the reading, murmuring, “Very nice!” “Charming!” “Perfect!” with frigid coldness.
“If you love me, do not congratulate the poet or his angel,” Lolotte laid her commands on her dear Adrien in imperious tones, and Adrien was fain to obey.
“Empty words, after all,” Zéphirine remarked to Francis, “and love is a poem that we live.”
“You have just expressed the very thing that I was thinking, Zizine, but I should not have put it so neatly,” said Stanislas, scanning himself from top to toe with loving attention.
“I would give, I don’t know how much, to see Naïs’ pride brought down a bit,” said Amélie, addressing Châtelet. “Naïs sets up to be an archangel, as if she were better than the rest of us, and mixes us up with low people; his father was an apothecary, and his mother is a nurse; his sister works in a laundry, and he himself is a printer’s foreman.”