Anne Charlotte Lynch Botta: Verses about Love

Come on the sea, beloved,
Fearless and free;
Leave friends and wealth behind;
Come, come with me.
My bark on the water shines
A fairy thing; -
See her pennon, mast, and keel!
She is but a little shell,
Yet there I am king.

The earth was made for the slave,
Oh maiden free!
But for man, the stern and brave,
The boundless sea.
The waves breathe in their flow
A mystery,
And tenderly they sing,
In their soft murmuring, -
Love, Liberty.

Go forth in life, oh friend! not seeking love;
A mendicant, that with imploring eye
And outstretched hand asks of the passers by
The alms his strong necessities may move.
For such poor love to pity near allied,
Thy generous spirit may not stoop and wait,
A suppliant, whose prayer may be denied,
Like a spurned beggar's at a palace gate:
But thy heart's affluence lavish uncontrolled;
The largess of thy love give full and free,
As monarchs in their progress scatter gold;
And be thy heart like the exhaustless sea,
That must its wealth of cloud and dew bestow,
Though tributary streams or ebb or flow.

Oh, stern indeed must be that minstrel's heart,
In the world's dusty highway doomed to move,
Who with life's sunshine and its flowers can part,
Who strikes his harp, and sings, Farewell to Love!

To Love! that beam that colors all our light,
As the red rays illume the light of day;
Whose rose-hue, once extinguished from the sight,
Leaves the life-landscape of a dull, cold gray.

To Love! the ethereal, the Promethean spirit,
That bids this dust with life divine be moved;
The only memory that we still inherit
Of the lost Eden where our parents roved.

Oh, hopeless bard, recall that farewell strain,
Nor from thy beast let this fond faith depart;
Recall that utterance of thy cold disdain,
Thy doubt of Love, the atheism of the heart.

And on the altar reared within thy soul,
Let the rekindled flame again aspire
And guard it round by all things beautiful,
As vestal forms watched o'er the sacred fire; -

That fire that once extinguished on the shrine,
Gave fearful sign of coming woe to Rome,
As the quenched brightness of this light divine
Forebodes to thee a dark and loveless doom.

Why should we weep for thee,
Since thou hast gone unsullied back to heaven,
No stain upon thy spirit's purity,
No sin to be forgiven?

Love watched thee from thy birth,
Fond hearts around thee tireless vigils kept;
And o'er thy tender soul the storms of earth
Had never rudely swept.

Thou art spared a fearful lore -
A knowledge all attain who linger here;
The changed, the cold, the dead, were words that bore
No import to thine ear.

Methought I saw in thee,
Thus early as I marked by many a token,
A soul that might not war with Destiny,
A heart that could be broken.

But sinless, tearless, gone,
Undimmed, unstained, who would not thus have died!
For thee then let these vain regrets be done,
These selfish tears be dried.

Go to thy little bed!
The verdant turf is springing fresh and fair,
The flowers thou lovedst shall blossom o'er thy head,
The spring birds warble there.

And while to shapeless dust
Thy cherub form is gently mouldering back,
Our thoughts shall upward soar, in hopeful trust,
On thy freed spirit's track.

Plant of a hundred years! destroying Time
Passes thy gentle race with hurrying trend,
Leaves their bright petals colorless and dim,
Strews with their withered leaves the mossy bed,
And sweeps them onward with the countless dead,
Ere the swift passing of the summer hour -
But, beauteous flower, above thy towering head
An age hath passed and left no trace of power:
Plant of a hundred years, thou seem'st Time's favorite flower!

I would that he had passed less lightly o'er thee,
And on thy polished leaves some record made,
Of all the scenes that long since passed before thee,
When round thee waved a forest, in whose shade
The Indian lover wooed his dusky maid, -
When the red warriors lit their council fires,
As peal'd the war-cry over hill and glade,
And then in triumph raised the funeral pyre
Of the ill-fated captive, bride, or son, or sire.

Alas, fair flower! they've vanished from the earth,
That wronged and injured race, and none are here
Of all the friends that knew thee at thy birth, -
No longer near thee rests the wearied deer,
Thy sister flowers have faded with each year;
Still thou remainest, though they all have flown,
Like some strange being from another sphere,
Or like some aged man, sad and alone, -
May I not linger here, when those I love are gone!

'Hereafter, when I no more belong to earth, I should love to return to
it as a spirit, and impart to men the deepest of that which I have
suffered and enjoyed, lived and loved. And no one need fear me; should
I come in the midnight hour to a striving and unquiet spirit, it would
be only to make it more quiet, its night-lamp burn more brightly, and
myself its friend and sister.' - _Miss Bremmer's Letter. _

Hereafter! - nay, thou has thy wish e'en here;
To many a striving spirit dost thou come,
Sweet lady, from thy far-off northern home,
Like a blest presence from another sphere,
And love and faith, the night-lamps of the soul,
Have burned with brighter flame at thy control.

A friend and sister art thou now to those
Who weep o'erburdened with life's weary load,
And faint and toil-worn tread the desert road;
To them thou beckonest from thy high repose:
Thou'st gained that steep where endless day appears,
That faith whose followers are baptized with tears.

There came no voices from thy distant shore;
We heard no echo of thy country's lyres,
We saw no gleaming of her household fires;
A cloud had hung thy land and language o'er,
Until thy pictured thoughts broke on our eyes
Like an Aurora of thy native skies.

Thy name is loved through all our fair wide land:
Where the log-cabins of our western woods
Are scattered through the dim old solitudes,
Where, glowing with young life, our cities stand,
There go thy white-winged messengers, as went
Of old the angels to the patriarch's tent.

My harp is tuneless and unknown to fame;
A few weak chords, alas! chance-strung and frail,
O'er which sweeps fitfully the passing gale.
Would it indeed were worthier of its theme,
That it might bear across the distant sea
The homage of unnumbered hearts to thee.

Why mounts my blood to cheek and brow,
Like an ascending flame,
Whene'er from careless lips I hear
The accents of thy name?

Why, when my idle fancy seeks
Some pictured form to trace,
Beneath my pencil still will grow
The features of thy face?

Why comes thy haunting shadow thus
Between the world and me,
To bind my spirit with a charm
That blinds to all but thee?

To bid me watch thine upward course,
Thy path from mine so far;
As earth, 'mid all the hosts of heaven,
Watches the polar star?

Thy cold and polished courtesy,
Each look and tone of thine,
Might well have roused the woman's pride
In duller souls than mine.

They tell me, too, thy heart is light, -
That more than once thou'st loved;
And 'mid all flowers of loveliness
That bee-like thou hast roved.

Why is it, then, while o'er thy heart
There comes no thought of me,
The good, the true, the beautiful,
All speak to me of thee?

Think'st thou 'tis what the world calls love,
Love that return is seeking?
No - I would scorn a love I sought,
Although my heart were breaking.

It is because within the human heart
There is an altar to an _Unknown God,_
Who from the gods of this world dwells apart,
And in the Unseen, the Unreal, has his abode.

This disembodied thought the soul pursues,
And seeking in the visible a sign,
She moulds an image, like the apostate Jews,
And sets her idol on the vacant shrine.

Thus worshipped once an Indian maid the sun;
Thus was an Arab boy won by a star;
Thus loved a maid of France the god in stone;
And thus did Numa love a shape of air.

What were the sun, the star, the god, to them,
The fond idolators! thou art to me;
And rapturous as a poet's earliest dream,
Is the sweet worship that I give to thee.

The world around me is so dark and cold,
Life hath for me such draughts of bitter sadness,
Oh, bid me not the mocking Real behold!
Oh, wake me not from this delicious madness!

'Twas but a dream; a fond and foolish dream;
The calenture of a delirious brain,
Whose fever thirst creates the rushing stream.
Now to the actual I awake again:
The vision to my gaze one moment granted,
Fades in its light away, and leaves me disenchanted.

The image that my glowing fancy wrought,
Now to the dust with ruthless hand I cast:
Thus I renounce the worship that I sought;
Of my own idol the iconoclast.
The echo of 'Eureka, I have found!'
Falls back upon my heart, a vain and empty sound.

Oh disembodied being of my mind,
So wildly loved, so fervently adored;
In whom all high and glorious gifts I shrined,
And my heart's incense on the altar poured;
Now do I know, that clad in mortal guise,
Ne'er on this earth wilt thou upon my vision rise.

That only in the vague, cold realm of thought,
Shall I meet thee whom here I seek in vain;
And like Egyptian Isis, when she sought
The scattered fragments of Osiris slain,
Now do I know that I shall never find
But fragments of thy soul within earth's clay enshrined.

Thou whom I have not seen, and shall not see,
Till the sad drama of this life be o'er!
Yet do I not renounce my faith in thee:
Thou art still mine, I think, forevermore;
And this belief shall be the funeral pyre
Of all less noble love, - of all less high desire.

Here, like the Hindoo widow, I will bring
Hope, youth, and all that woman prizes most,
The glow of summer and the bloom of spring,
And on thy altar lay the holocaust;
And in my faith exulting, I will see
The sacrifice consume, I consecrate to thee.

To love's sweet tones my heart shall never thrill,
Nor, as the tardy years their circles roll,
Shall they the ardor of its pulses chill.
Thus will I live, in widowhood of soul,
Until, at last, my lingering exile o'er,
Upon some lovelier star, too bless'd, we meet once more.

Oh, tell me not, that now indeed I dream;
That these aspirings mocked at last will be: -
Gleams of a higher life, to me they seem
A sacred pledge of immortality.
Tell not the yearning heart it shall not find:
Oh Love, thou art too strong! Oh God, thou art too kind!

A sad, sweet dream; it fell upon my soul
When song and thought first woke their echoes there,
Swaying my spirit to its wild control,
And with the shadow of a fond despair
Darkening the fountain of my young life's stream -
It haunts me still, and yet I know 'tis but a dream.

Whence art thou, shadowy presence, that canst hide
From my charmed sight the glorious things of earth?
A mirage o'er life's desert dost thou glide?
Or, with those glimmerings of a former birth,
A 'trailing cloud of glory,' hast thou come
From some bright world afar, our unremembered home?

I know thou dwell'st not in this dull cold Real,
I know thy home is in some brighter sphere;
I know I shall not meet thee, my Ideal!
In the dark wanderings that await me here -
Why comes thy gentle image then to me,
Wasting my night of life in one long dream of thee!

The city's peopled solitude, the glare
Of festal halls, moonlight and music's tone,
All breathe the sad refrain _thou art not there;_
And even with Nature, I am still alone;
With joy I watch her summer bloom depart -
I love drear winter's reign - 'tis winter in my heart.

And if I sigh upon my brow to see
The deepening shadow of Time's fleeting wing,
'Tis for the youth I might not give to thee, -
The vanished brightness of my first sweet spring;
That I might give thee not the joyous form,
Unsworn by bitter tears, unblighted by the storm.

And when the hearts I should be proud to win,
Breathe, in those tones that woman holds so dear,
Words of impassioned homage unto mine,
Coldly and harsh they fall upon my ear;
And as I listen to the fervent vow,
My weary heart replies, '_Alas! it is not thou!_'

And when the thoughts within my spirit glow,
That would outpour themselves in words of fire,
If some kind influence bade the music flow,
Like that which woke the notes of Memnon's lyre;
Thou, sunlight of my life! wakest not the lay -
And song within my heart unuttered dies away.

Depart, oh shadow! fatal dream, depart!
Go, I conjure thee; leave me this poor life,
And I will meet with firm, heroic heart,
Its threatening storms and its tumultuous strife,
And with the Poet-Seer will see thee stand,
To welcome my approach to thine own Spirit-land.

THE flowers of romance that I cherished,
Around me lie withered and dead;
The stars of my youth's shining heaven,
Were but meteors whose brightness misled;
And the day-dreams of life's vernal morning,
Like the mists of the morning have fled.

But one flower I have found still unwithered;
Like the night-scented jasmin it gleams;
And beyond where the fallen stars vanished,
One light pure and hallowed still beams;
One love I have found, deep and changeless,
As that I have yearned for in dreams.

Too often the links have been broken,
That bound me in friendship's bright chain
Too often has fancy deceived me
To blind or to charm me again;
And I sigh o'er my young heart's illusions,
With a sorrow I would were disdain.

But now, as the clouds return earthward,
From the cold and void ether above;
As on pinions all drooping and weary,
O'er the waste flew the wandering dove;
O'er the tide of the world's troubled waters,
I return to the ark of thy love.

Here, at length, my tired spirit reposes;
Here my heart's strongest tendrils entwine;
Here its warmest and deepest affections
It lays on earth's holiest shrine
Dearest mother, receive the devotion
Of the life thou hast given from thine.

Here, pressed to thy bosom, the tempests
That sweep over life's stormy sea,
Have beat, in their impotent fury, —
They were winged with no terror for me;
If I shrank from the fearful encounter,
If I trembled — it was but for thee.

The spirit of Song that lies buried
In silence or sleep in the breast,
Unlike the wild music of Memnon,
Is changed by the sunshine to rest;
In the clash of contending emotions
Are its harmonies only expressed.

When, at moments, my soul has been shaken,
In the strife with the world's rushing throng;
Or moved by some holier impulse,
As borne by its current along;
This spirit aroused, has responded,
And uttered these fragments of song.

I know they are but passing echoes,
For which time has no place and no name;
But hereafter, in loftier numbers,
Might I seek for the guerdon of fame —
Might I gather its evergreen laurels —
I would twine them around thy loved name.

But I mark now a pallor that deepens,
And spreads o'er thy brow and thy cheek;
And, filled with a fearful foreboding,
My strong heart grows nerveless and weak;
And shrinks back appalled from the anguish,
The blow beneath which it would break.

Oh, leave me not yet, gentle spirit,
Though our loved and our lost, gone before,
In the Better Land watch for thy coming,
And call thee away to that shore;
These clasped arms are strong to detain thee —
Leave, leave me not yet, I implore!

Oh God! let this cup but pass from me,
When thy bitterest draught would be thrown;
Not yet those sweet ties rend asunder
Heart with heart, life with life that have grown!
Not yet can I bear life's great burden,
And tread its dark wine-press alone.