Only the tender and quiet grace

Of one, whose heart has been healed with pardon!

And such am I. My soul within

Was dark with passion and soiled with sin.

But now its wounds are healed again;

Gone are the anguish, the terror, and pain;

For across that desolate land of woe,

O'er whose burning sands I was forced to go,
A wind from heaven began to blow;

And all my being trembled and shook,

As the leaves of the tree, or the grass of the field,

And I was healed, as the sick are healed,
When fanned by the leaves of the Holy Book!

As thou sittest in the moonlight there,

Its glory flooding thy golden hair,
And the only darkness that which lies

In the haunted chambers of thine eyes,

I feel my soul drawn unto thee,

Strangely, and strongly, and more and more,

As to one I have known and loved before;

For every soul is akin to me

That dwells in the land of mystery!

I am the Lady Irmingard,

Born of a noble race and name!

Many a wandering Suabian bard,

Whose life was dreary, and bleak, and hard,

Has found through me the way to fame.

Brief and bright were those days, and the night

Which followed was full of a lurid light.

Love, that of every woman's heart
Will have the whole, and not a part,
That is to her, in Nature's plan,

More than ambition is to man,

Her light, her life, her very breath,
With no alternative but death,

Found me a maiden soft and young,

Just from the convent's cloistered school, And seated on my lowly stool,

Attentive while the minstrels sung.

The sunshine, the delicious air,

The fragrance of the flowers, were there;

And I grew restless as I heard,

Restless and buoyant as a bird,

Down soft, aërial currents sailing,

O'er blossomed orchards, and fields in bloom,
And through the momentary gloom

Of shadows o'er the landscape trailing,
Yielding and borne I knew not where,
But feeling resistance unavailing.

And thus, unnoticed and apart,
And more by accident than choice,

I listened to that single voice

Until the chambers of my heart
Were filled with it by night and day.
One night,—it was a night in May,

Within the garden, unawares,
Under the blossoms in the gloom,
I heard it utter my own name
With protestations and wild prayers;
And it rang through me, and became
Like the archangel's trump of doom,
Which the soul hears, and must obey;
And mine arose as from a tomb.

66

My former life now seemed to me
Such as hereafter death may be,
When in the great Eternity

We shall awake and find it day.

It was a dream, and would not stay;
A dream, that in a single night
Faded and vanished out of sight.
My father's anger followed fast

This passion, as a freshening blast

Seeks out and fans the fire, whose rage

It

may increase, but not assuage.

And he exclaimed: "No wandering bard

Shall win thy hand, O Irmingard!

For which Prince Henry of Hoheneck

By messenger and letter sues."

Gently, but firmly, I replied:

Henry of Hoheneck I discard!

Never the hand of Irmingard

Shall lie in his as the hand of a bride!"

This said I, Walter, for thy sake;
This said I, for I could not choose.

After a pause, my father spake

In that cold and deliberate tone

Which turns the hearer into stone,

And seems itself the act to be

That follows with such dread certainty;

"This, or the cloister and the veil!"

No other words than these he said,

But they were like a funeral wail;
My life was ended, my heart was dead.

That night from the castle-gate went down, With silent, slow, and stealthy pace,

Two shadows, mounted on shadowy steeds,
Taking the narrow path that leads

Into the forest dense and brown.
In the leafy darkness of the place,
One could not distinguish form nor face,