Page:Poems of Sentiment and Imagination.djvu/199

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Of the dark slaves they could not fraternize.
Passion, and Selfishness, and all their brood
Of tyrant evils feasted in that home,
And tore the bocks of wisdom, and defaced
The lovely pictures Fancy had designed,
And crushed the flowers of Purity, and quenched
The burning lamps of Genius where they hung!
But a sweet angel-visitant then came,
And with the aweing power of purity
Walked through the palace, and the evils fled.
With graceful hand the pictures she retouched,
Re-lighted the dark lamps, re-wrote the books,
And breathed new perfume in the withered flowers;
And wheresoe'er she walked, the mirrors gave
Only her own fair image pure and bright;
And this sweet angel was Spiritual Love!

When she departed, desolate Despair
Touched his wild torch to all the lovely scene;
And while the flames rose over all within,
Stood 'mid the fearful ruin, Samson-like,
The maddened instrument of his own death.
Yet who that stood and on that palace gazed,
With its proud, marble front so calm and cold,
Would even dream that all was dark within—
All hollow, dreary, charred, and tenantless—
Save by the ghosts of past magnificence!
But thus it was with Clarence, since the hour,
When doubly desolate, rebuked, and still,
He went forth from the presence of his love.
His mighty heart became the sepulcher
Holding the ashes of its own dead friends.
And haunted by pale shadows of the past;
While mind, like a dumb slave, sat at the door.
That none might know the desolation there!

If the young flowers of Adel's high heart
Were laid upon a shrine that withered them,