old Claude! Peaceful, pure Spirit, be thy sojourn here, And short and soon thy passage to that world Where friends shall part no more! “Does thy soul own No other wish? or sleeps poor Madelon Forgotten in her grave? seest thou yon star,” The Spirit pursued, regardless of her eye That look’d reproach; “seest thou that evening star Whose lovely light so often we beheld From yonder woodbine porch? how have we gazed Into the dark deep sky, till the baffled soul, Lost in the infinite, returned, and felt The burthen of her bodily load, and yearned For freedom! Maid, in yonder evening slar Lives thy departed friend. I read that glance, And we are there!” He said and they had past The immeasurable space. Then on her ear The lonely song of adoration rose, Sweet as the cloister’d virgins vesper hymn, Whose spirit, happily dead to earthly hopes Already lives in Heaven. Abrupt the song Ceas’d, tremulous and quick a cry Of joyful wonder rous’d the astonish’d Maid, And instant Madelon was in her arms; No airy form, no unsubstantial shape, She felt her friend, she prest her to her heart, Their tears of rapture mingled. She drew back And eagerly she gazed on Madelon, Then fell upon her neck again and wept. No more she saw the long-drawn lines of grief, The emaciate form, the hue of sickliness, The languid eye: youth’s loveliest freshness now Mantled her cheek, whose every lineament Bespake the soul at rest, a holy calm, A deep and full tranquillity of bliss.  “Thou then art come, my first and dearest friend!” The well known voice of Madelon began, “Thou then art come! and was thy pilgrimage So short on earth? and was it painful too, Painful and short as mine? but blessed they Who from the crimes and miseries of the world Early escape!” “Nay,” Theodore replied, She hath not yet fulfill’d her mortal work. Permitted visitant from earth she comes To see the seat of rest, and oftentimes In sorrow shall her soul remember this, And patient of the transitory woe Partake the anticipated peace again.” “Soon be that work perform’d!” the Maid exclaimed, “O Madelon! O Theodore! my soul, Spurning the cold communion of the world, Will dwell with you! but I shall patiently, Yea even with joy, endure the allotted ills Of which the memory in this better state Shall heighten bliss. That hour of agony, When, Madelon, I felt thy dying grasp, And from thy forehead wiped the dews of death, The very horrors of that hour assume A shape that now delights.” “O earliest friend! I too remember,” Madelon replied, “That hour, thy looks of watchful agony, The suppressed grief that struggled in thine eye Endearing love’s last kindness. Thou didst know With what a deep and melancholy joy I felt the hour draw on: but who can speak The unutterable transport, when mine eyes, As from a long and 

 Prev. P 17/51 next