Page:Foreign Tales and Traditions (Volume 1).djvu/413

Laid on the daughter of her love.
With snowy robes and saintly hood,
And eyes like those of Hermon’s dove,
The nuns beside the altar stood:
Madonna-forms, that gazed above,
In half-entranced, half-humbled mood,
As if their souls from passion free,
Dwelt in a sphere of sanctity.

Fronting that meek angelic band
The fathers of the order stand:
More earthly, yet more mortified,
Less spiritual, yet more austere;
A spark of passion and of pride
Still lurked about their eyes severe;
And their knit brows appeared to hide
A sense of chilliness and fear,
Such as the loveless man must feel,
And though he curb cannot conceal.

But who is she so mute and pale,
Whose locks below the novice-veil
Are like the sable brow of night
Girt with the zodiac’s milky band?
Why is her eye no longer bright?
Why faintly droops the feeble hand?
Why, sullying her beauty’s light,
Burns on her cheek the tear-drop’s brand?
A woe hath long oppressed her heart,
Which would not rest, and scarce depart.

Is it gone now? She deemeth so;
Yet who, contending with that foe,
May say, I’ve foiled his force and art?
For oft his seeming death is sleep,

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