Kathrina—A Poem

by J. G. Holland

PART I.

CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH.

Thou lovely vale of sweetest stream that flows:
Winding and willow-fringed Connecticut!
Swift to thy fairest scenes my fancy flies,
As I recall the story of a life
Which there began in years of sinless hope,
And merged maturely into hopeless sin.

O! golden dawning of a day of storms,
That fell ere noontide into rayless night!
O! beautiful initial, vermeil-flowered,
And bright with cherub-eyes and effigies,
To the black-letter volume of my life!
O! faëry gateway, gilt and garlanded,
And shining in the sun, to gloomy groves
Of shadowy cypress, and to sunless streams,
Feeding with bane the deadly nightshade's roots,—
To vexing labyrinths of doubt and fear,
And deep abysses of despair and death!
Back to thy peaceful villages and fields,
My memory, like a weary pilgrim, comes
With scrip and burdon, to repose awhile,—
To pluck a daisy from a lonely grave
Where long ago, in common sepulture,
I laid my mother and my faith in God;
To fix the record of a single day
So memorably wonderful and sweet
Its power of inspiration lingers still,—
So full of her dear presence, so divine
With the melodious breathing of her words,
And the warm radiance of her loving smile,
That tears fall readily as April rain
At its recall; to pass in swift review
The years of adolescence, and the paths
Of glare and gloom through which, by passion led
I reached the fair possession of my power,
And won the dear possession of my love,
And then—farewell!

Queen-village of the meads
Fronting the sunrise and in beauty throned,
With jewelled homes around her lifted brow,
And coronal of ancient forest trees—
Northampton sits, and rules her pleasant realm.
There where the saintly Edwards heralded
The terrors of the Lord, and men bowed low
Beneath the menace of his awful words;
And there where Nature, with a thousand tongues
Tender and true, from vale and mountain-top,
And smiling streams, and landscapes piled afar,
Proclaimed a gentler Gospel, I was born.

In an old home, beneath an older elm—
A fount of weeping greenery, that dripped
Its spray of rain and dew upon the roof—
I opened eyes on life; and now return,
Among the visions of my early years,
Two so distinct that all the rest grow dim:
My mother's pale, fond face and tearful eyes,
Bent upon me in Love's absorbing trance,
From the low window where she watched my play;
And, after this, the wondrous elm, that seemed
To my young fancy like an airy bosk,
Poised by a single stem upon the earth,
And thronged by instant marvels. There in Spring
I heard with joy the cheery blue-bird's note;
There sang rejoicing robins after rain;
And there within the emerald twilight, which
Defied the mid-day sun, from bough to bough—
A torch of downy flame—the oriole
Passed to his nest, to feed the censer-fires
Which Love had lit for Airs of Heaven to swing.
There, too, through all the weird September-eves
I heard the harsh, reiterant katydids
Rasp the mysterious silence. There I watched
The glint of stars, playing at hide-and-seek
Behind the swaying foliage, till drawn
By tender hands to childhood's balmy rest.
My Mother and the elm! Too soon I learned
That o'er me hung, and o'er the widowed one
Who gave me birth, with broader boughs,
Haunted by sabler wings and sadder sounds,
A darker shadow than the mighty elm!
I caught the secret in the street from those
Who pointed at me as I passed, or paused
To gaze in sighing pity on my play;
From playmates who, forbidden to divulge
The knowledge they possessed, with childish tricks
Of indirection strove in vain to hide
Their awful meaning in unmeaning phrase;
From kisses which were pitiful; from words
Gentler than love's because compassionate;
From deep, unconscious sighs out of the heart
Of her who loved me best, and from her tears
That freest flowed when I was happiest.
From frailest filaments of evidence,
From dark allusions faintly overheard,
From hint and look and sudden change of theme
When I approached, from widely scattered words
Remembered well, and gathered all at length
Into consistent terms, I know not how
I wrought the full conclusion, nor how young.
I only know that when a little child
I learned, though no one told, that he who gave
My life to me in madness took his own—
Took it from fear of want, though he possessed
The finest fortune in the rich old town.

Thenceforth I had a secret which I kept—
Kept by my mother with as close a tongue—
A secret which embittered every cup.
It bred rebellion in me—filled my soul,
Opening to life in innocent delight,
With baleful doubt and harrowing distrust.
Why, if my father was the godly man
His gentle widow vouched with tender tears,
Did He to whom she bowed in daily prayer—
Who loved us, as she told me, with a love
Ineffable for strength and tenderness—
Permit such fate to him, such woe to us?
Ah! many a time, repeating on my knees
The simple language of my evening prayer
Which her dear lips had taught me, came the dark
Perplexing question, stirring in my heart
A sense of guilt, or quenching all my faith.
This, too, I kept a secret. I had died
Rather than breathe the question in her ears
Who knelt beside me. I had rather died
Than add a sorrow to the load she bore.
Taught to be true, I played the hypocrite
In truthfulness to her. I had no God,
Nor penitence, nor loyalty nor love;
For any being higher than herself.
Jealous of all to whom she gave her hand,
I clung to her with fond idolatry.
I sat with her; where'er she walked, I walked
I kissed away her tears; I strove to fill,
With strange precocity of manly pride
And more than boyish tenderness, the void
Which death had made.

I could not fail to see
That ruth for me and sorrow for her loss—
Twin leeches at her heart—were drinking blood
That, from her pallid features, day by day
Sank slowly down, to feed the cruel draught.
Nay, more than this I saw, and sadly worse.
Oft when I watched her and she knew it not,
I marked a quivering horror sweep her face—
A strange, quick thrill of pain—that brought her hand
With sudden pressure to her heart, and forced
To her white lips a swiftly whispered prayer.
I fancied that I read the mystery;
But it was deeper and more terrible
Than I conjectured. Not till darker years
Came the solution.

Still, we had some days
Of pleasure. Sorrow cannot always brood
Over the shivering forms that drink her warmth;
But springs to meet the morning light, and soars
Into the empyrean, to forget
For one sweet hour the ring of greedy mouths
That surely wait, and cry for her return.
My mother's hand in mine, or mine in hers,
We often left the village far behind,
And walked the meadow-paths to gather flowers,
And watch the plowman as he turned the tilth,
Or tossed his burnished share into the sun
At the long furrow's end, the while we marked
The tipsy bobolink, struggling with the chain
Of tinkling music that perplexed his wings,
And listened to the yellow-breasted lark's
Sweet whistle from the grass.

Glad in my joy,
My mother smiled amid these scenes and sounds,
And wandered on with gentle step and slow,
While I, in boyish frolic, ran before,
Chasing the butterflies, or in her path
Tossing the gaudy gold of buttercups,
Till sometimes, ere we knew, we stood entranced
Upon the river's marge.