Mazelli, and Other Poems | Page 9

peaceful thought;?And so they turn not back to gaze,?Where faithful memory displays?Her record of departed days;?But oh! how loves the eye of age,?To move along its pictured page,?To scan and number, o'er and o'er,?The joys that may return no more;?The hopes that, blighted in their bloom,?By disappointment's chilly gloom,?Were given sadly to the tomb;?The loves so wildly once enjoyed,?By time's unsparing hand destroyed;?The bright imaginative dreams,?Portrayed by restless fancy's beams,?By restless fancy's beams portrayed,?Alas! but to delude and fade!?To count these o'er and o'er again?Is age's sole resort from pain.?Then, stranger, marvel not that I?Have claimed so long thy listening ear;?I could not pass in silence by?Themes to my memory so dear,?As those which make my story's close--?Mazelli's love, Mazelli's woes.
III.
Ascending from the golden east,?The sun had gained his zenith height,?The guests were gathered to the feast,?Prepared to grace the marriage rite;?The youthful and the old were there,?The rustic swain and bashful fair;?The aged, reverend and gray,?Yet hale, and garrulous, and gay,?Each told, to while the time away,?Some tale of his own wedding day;?The youthful, timorous and shy,?Spoke less with lip than tell-tale eye,?That, in its stolen glances, sends?The language Love best, comprehends.?The noontide hour goes by, and yet?The bridegroom tarries--why? and where??Sure he could not his vows forget,?When she who loves him is so fair!?And then his honour, faith, and pride,?Had bound him to a meaner bride,?If once his promise had been given;?But she, so pure, so far above?The common forms of earthly mould,?So like the incarnate shapes of love,?Conceived, and born, and nursed in heaven,?His love for her could ne'er grow cold!?And yet he comes not. Half way now,?From where, at his meridian height,?He pours his fullest, warmest light,?To where, at eve, in his decline,?The day-god sinks into the brine,?When his diurnal task is done,?Descends his ever burning throne,?And still the bridegroom is not, there--?Say, why yet tarries he, and where?
IV.
Within an arbour, rudely reared,?But to the maiden's heart endeared?By every tie that binds the heart,?By hope's, and love's, and memory's art,--?For it was here he first poured out?In words, the love she could not doubt,--?Mazelli silent sits apart.?Did ever dreaming devotee,?Whose restless fancy, fond and warm,?Shapes out the bright ideal form?To which he meekly bends the knee,?Conceive of aught so fair as she??The holiest seraph of the sphere?Most holy, if by chance led here,?Might drink such light from those soft eyes,?That he would hold them far more dear?Than all the treasures of the skies.?Yet o'er her bright and beauteous brow?Shade after shade is passing now,?Like clouds across the pale moon glancing,?As thought on rapid thought advancing,?Thrills through the maiden's trembling breast,?Not doubting, and yet not at rest.?Not doubting! Man may turn away?And scoff at shrines, where yesterday?He knelt, in earnest faith, to pray,?And wealth may lose its charm for him,?And fame's alluring star grow dim,?Devotion, avarice, glory, all?The pageantries of earth may pall;?But love is of a higher birth?Than these, the earth-born things of earth,--?A spark from the eternal flame,?Like it, eternally the same,?It is not subject to the breath?Of chance or change, of life or death.?And so doubt has no power to blight?Its bloom, or quench its deathless light,--?A deathless light, a peerless bloom,?That beams and glows beyond the tomb!?Go tell the trusting devotee,?His worship is idolatry;?Say to the searcher after gold,?The prize he seeks is dull and cold;?Assure the toiler after fame,?That, won, 'tis but a worthless name,?A mocking shade, a phantasy,--?And they, perchance, may list to thee;?But say not to the trusting maid,?Her love is scorned, her faith betrayed,--?As soon thy words may lull the gale,?As gain her credence to the tale!?And still the bridegroom is not there--?Oh! why yet tarries he, and where?
V.
It was the holy vesper hour,?The time for rest, and peace, and prayer,?When falls the dew, and folds the flower?Its petals, delicate and fair,?Against the chilly evening air;?And yet the bridegroom was not there.?The guests, who lingered through the day,?Had glided, one by one, away,?And then, with pale and pensive ray,?The moon began to climb the sky,?As from the forest, dim and green,?A small and silent band was seen?Emerging slow and solemnly;?With cautious step, and measured tread,?They moved as those who bear the dead;?And by no lip a word was spoke,?Nor other sound the silence broke,?Save when, low, musical, and clear,?The voice of waters passing near,?Was softly wafted to the ear,?And the cool, fanning twilight breeze,?That lightly shook the forest trees,?And crept from leaf to trembling leaf,?Sighed, like to one oppressed with grief.?Why move they with such cautious care??What precious burden do they bear??Hush, questioner! the dead are there;--?The victim of revenge and hate,?Of fierce Ottali's fiery pride,?With that stern minister of fate,?As cold and lifeless by his side.
VI.
Still onward, solemnly and slow,?And speaking not a word, they go,?Till pausing in their way before?Mazelli's quiet cottage door,?They gently lay their burden