Page:Poems Proctor.djvu/193

And for the fond arms' tender fold,
Than if I knelt, a maiden cold,
And only knew of love and Thee
What the lone cloister taught to me.

And yet the priest says I have sealed
My own damnation; madly healed
My orphan sorrow with a name
Will send me straight to burning flame!
Because I dared to give my vows
To Bertrand; would not be the spouse
Of Holy Church, and wear the veil
Within the convent's dreary pale,—
Our Lady's,—hid in dusk of trees
High up the chilly Pyrenees,
Where the white, ghostly nuns look out,
And wild winds toss the boughs about,
And moan and mutter through the air,
Of fast and scourge and midnight prayer.
Oh, what a living death were mine,
Locked in that gloom of fir and pine!

And here, like roses to the sun,
My bright days open, one by one;
And deep within their bloom, my heart
Sings like some nightingale apart
In orange grove, while winds of May
Up the still valley waft his lay!
And have I failed of heaven for this?
Bartered my soul for Bertrand's kiss?