The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Volume II Part 6

They cursed her deep, they smote her low, They cleft her golden ringlets through; The Loving is the Dying.

XLIII.

She felt the scimitar gleam down, And met it from beneath With smile more bright in victory Than any sword from sheath,-- Which flashed across her lip serene, Most like the spirit-light between The darks of life and death.

XLIV.

_Ingemisco, ingemisco!_ From the convent on the sea, Now it sweepeth solemnly, As over wood and over lea Bodily the wind did carry The great altar of St. Mary, And the fifty tapers paling o'er it, And the Lady Abbess stark before it, And the weary nuns with hearts that faintly Beat along their voices saintly-- _Ingemisco, ingemisco!_ Dirge for abbess laid in shroud Sweepeth o'er the shroudless dead, Page or lady, as we said, With the dews upon her head, All as sad if not as loud.

_Ingemisco, ingemisco!_ Is ever a lament begun By any mourner under sun, Which, ere it endeth, suits but _one_?

_THE LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY._

FIRST PART.

I.

"Onora, Onora,"--her mother is calling, She sits at the lattice and hears the dew falling Drop after drop from the sycamores laden With dew as with blossom, and calls home the maiden, "Night cometh, Onora."

II.

She looks down the garden-walk caverned with trees, To the limes at the end where the green arbour is-- "Some sweet thought or other may keep where it found her, While, forgot or unseen in the dreamlight around her, Night cometh--Onora!"

III.

She looks up the forest whose alleys shoot on Like the mute minster-aisles when the anthem is done And the choristers sitting with faces aslant Feel the silence to consecrate more than the chant-- "Onora, Onora!"

IV.

And forward she looketh across the brown heath-- "Onora, art coming?"--what is it she seeth?

Nought, nought but the grey border-stone that is wist To dilate and a.s.sume a wild shape in the mist-- "My daughter!" Then over

V.

The cas.e.m.e.nt she leaneth, and as she doth so She is 'ware of her little son playing below: "Now where is Onora?" He hung down his head And spake not, then answering blushed scarlet-red,-- "At the tryst with her lover."

VI.

But his mother was wroth: in a sternness quoth she, "As thou play'st at the ball art thou playing with me?

When we know that her lover to battle is gone, And the saints know above that she loveth but one And will ne'er wed another?"

VII.

Then the boy wept aloud; 't was a fair sight yet sad To see the tears run down the sweet blooms he had: He stamped with his foot, said--"The saints know I lied Because truth that is wicked is fittest to hide: Must I utter it, mother?"

VIII.

In his vehement childhood he hurried within And knelt at her feet as in prayer against sin, But a child at a prayer never sobbeth as he-- "Oh! she sits with the nun of the brown rosary, At nights in the ruin--

IX.

"The old convent ruin the ivy rots off, Where the owl hoots by day and the toad is sun-proof, Where no singing-birds build and the trees gaunt and grey As in stormy sea-coasts appear blasted one way-- But is _this_ the wind's doing?

X.

"A nun in the east wall was buried alive Who mocked at the priest when he called her to shrive, And shrieked such a curse, as the stone took her breath, The old abbess fell backwards and swooned unto death With an Ave half-spoken.

XI.

"I tried once to pa.s.s it, myself and my hound, Till, as fearing the lash, down he s.h.i.+vered to ground-- A brave hound, my mother! a brave hound, ye wot!

And the wolf thought the same with his fangs at her throat In the pa.s.s of the Brocken.

XII.

"At dawn and at eve, mother, who sitteth there With the brown rosary never used for a prayer?

Stoop low, mother, low! If we went there to see, What an ugly great hole in that east wall must be At dawn and at even!

XIII.

"Who meet there, my mother, at dawn and at even?

Who meet by that wall, never looking to heaven?

O sweetest my sister, what doeth with _thee_ The ghost of a nun with a brown rosary And a face turned from heaven?

XIV.

"Saint Agnes o'erwatcheth my dreams and erewhile I have felt through mine eyelids the warmth of her smile; But last night, as a sadness like pity came o'er her, She whispered--'Say _two_ prayers at dawn for Onora: The Tempted is sinning.'"

XV.

"Onora, Onora!" they heard her not coming, Not a step on the gra.s.s, not a voice through the gloaming; But her mother looked up, and she stood on the floor Fair and still as the moonlight that came there before, And a smile just beginning:

XVI.

It touches her lips but it dares not arise To the height of the mystical sphere of her eyes, And the large musing eyes, neither joyous nor sorry Sing on like the angels in separate glory Between clouds of amber;

XVII.

For the hair droops in clouds amber-coloured till stirred Into gold by the gesture that comes with a word; While--O soft!--her speaking is so interwound Of the dim and the sweet, 't is a twilight of sound And floats through the chamber.

XVIII.

"Since thou shrivest my brother, fair mother," said she "I count on thy priesthood for marrying of me, And I know by the hills that the battle is done.

That my lover rides on, will be here with the sun, 'Neath the eyes that behold thee."

XIX.