ISIS
I sprang from the couch, till I stood by the side
Of my friend, as he gazed at the bodice and dress;
“This way,” whispered he, “and I’ll show you a bride
Not to wed but to worship—to sing not to bless.”
Dear God! as the picture the painter unsealed,
The curtain was shrivelled away to a scroll—
I felt that an Isis of Eld was revealed,
That Isis I veiled in the crypt of my soul!
Those pure melting eyes float that mystical gauze,
Which prophecy weaves on the sight and the hair
Of those that peer down the death-vistas and pause
O’er the slab and the violets waiting them there.
There’s a fountain of tears by the fountain of mirth,
As twilights are thin ’twixt an old and new leaven;
And if not a paladin hero of earth
She could make me a passionate pilgrim of heaven.
Ah, the glove’s on the mantel, the rose in the glass,
The name in the Bible upon the blank page,
And the very same rosary fingered at mass
Coiled by the canary bird—dead in its cage.
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