Anne Charlotte Lynch Botta: Verses about Sorrow

Thou dost not dwell in this dark world of ours,
Where sorrow, want, and crime, and misery reign;
Where famine stalks; where war's dread tempest lowers;
Where stands the scaffold, and where clanks the chain.

But far upon the future's unreached shore,
The promised land to be our heritage;
There thou, in trancéd visions, dost restore
The vanished glories of the Golden Age.

When, in the miser's eager gaze,
His countless treasures lie,
Then most his coward spirit sinks,
With dread of poverty.

And when I felt within my grasp,
The treasure of thy love;
The insatiate avarice of the heart
Fierce with my spirit strove.

It troubled the clear fountain where
My thirsting soul had quaffed,
And mingled tears of bitterness
With the delicious draft.

I love to look on that eye of blue,
For tears have not yet worn a channel through;
And the few bright summers since thy birth,
Have left thee a stranger still on earth.

A stranger - and all, to thine untaught eyes,
Is bright with the hues of paradise.
The rapture of being thrills thy frame,
And sorrow thou know'st not even by name.

Thy innocent thoughts, unswayed by art,
Gush from the depths of thy guileless heart;
Like a harp when the wandering breezes sigh,
Answering each touch with melody.

I would, sweet one, I might wish for thee,
That a stranger thus thou shouldst ever be;
That time might not lift the enchanted veil,
Nor breathe in thine ear his mournful tale.

But those who are bid to this feast of life,
Must drink the cup, - must abide the strife: -
Then it were better to wish for thee,
Strength for the conflict, and victory.

'Twas no illusion; from the Past the veil was rent away;
The tide that never changes ebbed, and bore me to that day,
When in the lists and on the field brave deeds of arms were done,
When England blushed beneath the rule of recreant King John.

Scenes from that dim and buried Past came thronging on the gaze,
In all the splendid pageantry of those heroic days.
There Angiers' towers and battlements in stately grandeur frowned
Upon the engines of grim war grouped threat'ningly around:

And where the gathering warlike ranks in burnished armor gleamed,
The sacred Oriflamme of France, the Red Cross Banner streamed:
There Templars came with cross and sword, vowed to the Holy Land,
There were the fiery feudal lords, each with his vassal band:

And in his scarlet robes arrayed, the haughty legate strode,
As when above the prostrate King, in ancient days he trode.
Forgetful, for the hour I lived in that chivalric age,
Amid the stirring scenes portrayed on History's varied page.

But when the gentle Constance came and bowed her queenly head
To that wild tempest of the soul, that grief profound and dread,
The pageant vanished from my sight, I only heard her words,
I only felt the woe that thrilled the heart's electric chords.

Years bring decay and change and death to kingdom and to clime,
But human sympathy and love are changeless through all time:
In the eternal Now they live, though centuries o'er them roll;
They bloom forever fresh and young, immortal as the soul.

Thou, on whose brow the coronet of injured Constance shone,
Who to the glittering circlet gav'st a lustre not its own, -
Thou canst recall those lovely forms the faded Past inurns;
Thou summonest, and the shapeless dust to life and youth returns.

Thou hast the spell, the magic power, the heart's deep founts to move,
To wake the latent ecstasies of Hope, Despair and Love, -
And many a poet's loveliest dream now bears thy form and face,
Speaks in thy sweet impassioned voice, and wears thy matchless grace.

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.