Poems (Larcom)/Legend of a Veil

by Lucy Larcom

LEGEND OF A VEIL.²

SEVEN hundred years ago, a pair on whom
The accidental honor of a crown
Had worthily fallen, in their morning hour
Of bridal bliss, stood hand in hand, and gazed
Into a world which love makes Eden still;
Leopold of Austria and his Swabian bride.
The old baronial rampart where they stood
Frowned down upon Vienna, that smiled back.
They, in the open balcony of oak,
Sunlit and airy, saw the wide earth bloom
Around them like one flower, as lovers will:
And, for a while, they silently were glad.
Then, out of his full joy, young Leopold spoke:

"Beloved, see this beauteous realm of mine,
Whereof thou reignest queen. How all things smile
To welcome thy sweet looks! How every herb
And bough and thicket upward sends to thee
A pleasant smell! And He is surely pleased,
Who sits above the sun, and makes the world
Blossom with gladness,—He is surely pleased
To see us stand here happy in His sight.
Yet not even love brings satisfying bliss:
No joy that overflows must run to waste.
And work awaits us in this Paradise,—
Where thou shalt be my helpmeet; thou, mine Eve!
Rulers are gardeners only. Thou and I
Will toil among the earth-bedraggled vines
And frost-nipped blossoms of humanity,
Till life around looks fresh as Nature does,
Sunned in our love, and in the smile of God.

"Before I saw thy face, the mother of Christ
Was ever as a light amid my thoughts,
Charming me forth unto heroic deeds;
Showing the way of lowly sacrifice
Where kingly souls with her dear Son must walk.
My Agnes, from thy gentle eye distils
A ray more luminous in its tenderness
Through every inmost channel of resolve.
Thy woman's soul with my man's mind shall blend,
One work, one inspiration: I shall rule
Nobly through thee, my bride, my beautiful!"

As one who tunes a flute among the hills,
And hears, entranced, the music eddying back
In palpitating echoes through the air,
All unaware that he awoke that joy,
Agnes took softly up her husband's word
In charmed unconsciousness:

In charmed unconsciousness: "O beautiful life,
O beautiful world, wherein I live with thee!
Thanks unto God, who made thee first my friend,
Then lover and husband. Little would it be
To stand beside thee here, thy wife and queen,
Were I not raised to nobler eminence,
Lifted to share with thee both work and thought,
Mate of thine aspirations. Friend, best friend,
And dearest always by that name to me,
Because the name is an immortal one,—
Might I not look as now in thy soul's eyes,
And feel thy love through larger and through less,
Diffusing calm, opening new wells of joy
That rise beyond expression, making all
I share with thee as sacramental food,
What had been left? The thought is bitter bleak:
Dreary and gray as the Siberian wilds,
Had spread my life. But God would still have been:
I should have met him in the wilderness,
Thee, afterward, perhaps, in Heaven.

Thee, afterward, perhaps, in Heaven. Mine own!
Whene'er I hear the convent vesper-bell,
Or echo of a midnight cloister-chant,
The manly chorals in sonorous praise
Responding to the unseen sisters' hymn,
I think there may be hearts like thine and mine,
Hidden behind the nun's veil and the cowl,
Forever separated, yet so near!
God listens through the screens they cannot lift;
The chords lost here ring full in heaven. And yet
'T is surely better to strike all the keys
Of this our manifold being to His praise,
Sending through low and high, through discords even,
One thrill of unison. All we have is His,
And we ourselves; and we will live so here,
That in that land where are no marriages,
We shall forever in one mansion dwell,
Still finding Heaven in some joint work for Him.

Ah, what can Heaven be, and this earth so fair?
River that waterest Eden, art thou then
More glorious than our Danube, when the doors
Of the East are open, and the sunshine pours
Upon his path between the solemn hills,
And over the green, grateful fields? And thou,
City of Light, aglow with jasper walls
And gates of pearl, art thou more beautiful
Than our Vienna, lifting up her hands
To us from cottage-lattice, tower, and spire,
Beckoning from her innumerable lives
That we can bless, and shall?

That we can bless, and shall? O royal life,
Royal to all who carry royal hearts,
Thou shalt be benediction to our realm!
Let us build tabernacles here, beloved,
On durable foundations of deep bliss.
Upon some height let us set up a house,
A home for holy men, to sanctify
The memory of this, our marriage-day."

So spake that happy bride, and upward looked
To meet the answer of her husband's eyes.
Bending, he lifted her white, floating veil,
And touched her forehead with his lips, and said
With reverent earnestness, "We will."
With reverent earnestness, "We will." The wind,
The only listener passing, heard their vow,
And suddenly and lightly took the veil
And bore it far along the orange-boughs,
And over the rose-gardens all in bloom,
And hid it in the green woods out of sight.

Then Leopold sent out squires to bring it back,
For Agnes' sake, who could not bear to lose
One token of their married happiness;
But none could find it. And the cheerful years
Passed over them like days, filled to the brim
With princely undertakings, and perfumed
With gratitude, which every princely heart
Takes as a spur to steadier energy,
And fervor of well-doing: so the vow
Of that fair morning from their memory passed.

Years after, as a summer twilight fell,
Giving his flagging steed a languid rein,
Duke Leopold let his huntsmen homeward ride
Far out of sight before him. Through a glen
He loitered on, where never hoof had trod,
Crushing the juicy bracken and crisp turf,
All spray, and spice, and coolness; under pines
That lifted their green tops like minster-spires
Into blue light above, and hid their ranks
Of spectral stems and dimly-woven boughs
In deeper than cathedral gloom behind.
Out of the wood a silent rivulet stole,
And caught the red of sunset, and then crept
Into the shadow of the beckoning ferns.
A bird trilled from a bush: within the wood
Another answered; then a hundred sang.
The shivering sweetness through the bracken passed,
And Leopold halted. Standing by his steed,
Against the darkened forest, with the glow
Of sunset falling on his upturned brow,
Strange peace enthralled him; and subdued he said,
"This is a holy place, a holy hour:
Here might the angels walk."

Here might the angels walk." Even while he spoke,
He caught a glimpse of wavering whiteness swayed
Within a dingle close at hand. Thereat
Startled one moment, instincts of a knight
In the next spurred him towards the mystery,
And lo, the veil of Agnes! It had hung
Here, in the sanctuary of the wood,
Heaven-kept, while robber-tempests went and came,
With the birds singing round it, and the flowers
Filling it with perfume, from spring to spring,
In token of a promise unfulfilled.
Leopold was touched. Yet, thridding a blind path
Out of the glimmering twilight of the pines,
"Ever," he said, "I doubted if the monks
Praised God so well as many an honest serf,
Who earned his bread and ate it thankfully.
They pitch their notes too high for humble folk,
And call the common singing sacrilege.
If peasants thank our Lord for anything,
It is for wife, and little ones, and home,
As I for my sweet Agnes and her babes.
No saintly joy is this, the brethren say,
And pity us and pray for us, and wrap
Themselves in cloaks of sanctity, and walk
Their shining road to heaven above our heads,—
Pavement of gold that we must keep repaired,
Whate'er befalls us in the thoroughfare,
Or on the broken bridge across the chasm.
Labor, methinks, and prayer are of one piece.
Nay, toil is also praise, the best, from those
Whose ringers are more flexile than their tongues.

"Alack! what do I murmur to myself?
Agnes would grieve to overhear these thoughts.
She likens prayers and hymns unto a stream
Flowing amid the sandy wastes of life,
Watering the roots of action; nerving up
The earnest toiler's strength; the wine of heaven.
Our priests sit at the guarded fountain-head,
To keep the waters pure, and pour the wine
For fainting pilgrims. Niggardly it were,
Saith she, to grudge them shelter, who prepare
A tent for us amid the wilderness.
And Agnes is to me what all these hymns
And chants and mighty chorals are to her,—
A glorious lifting-up; to heart, delight;
To hands, unbounded strength. I would I were
A good King Robert³ for her sake, to vein
The court and camp with rills of saintly song,
A thrill of Veni Sancte Spiritus
To waken underneath the satin scarfs
And ermine mantles of my followers.
I am but Leopold, an ungifted man,
Save for my ducal crown and her dear love.
A vow is still a vow, though tardily kept.
She shall behold a stately cloister built
Within the glen that hid her bridal veil.
And I will toil on, hoping yet to see
Each hut within my realm a home like mine,
And every peasant happy as a duke."

So Kloster-Neuberg rose among the hills;
There Agnes' veil is shrined, and Leopold there
Is worshipped as a saint.

Is worshipped as a saint. Good man, he sleeps
Too soundly to be vexed by anything
That may be said or sung above his grave.
Perhaps he would have thought the monks misplaced
The aureole that they set upon his brow,
Not on his bride's. No doubt he would have asked
To be remembered for some other work
Than convent-building: but he could not choose;
He is a saint perforce. The healthier grace
Of honorable manhood counts him naught,
And less than naught his household happiness:
Within the threshold laid by wedded joy,
The very thought of it is sacrilege.

And yet the buried sweetness of true love
That once hung rose-wreaths round the Austrian throne,
The brethren with a deprecating sigh
Will sometimes air, unfolding Agnes' veil.