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James Russell Lowell - The Captive
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It was past the hour of trysting,
  But she lingered for him still;
Like a child, the eager streamlet
  Leaped and laughed adown the hill,
Happy to be free at twilight
  From its toiling at the mill.

Then the great moon on a sudden
  Ominous, and red as blood,
Startling as a new creation,
  O`er the eastern hilltop stood,
Casting deep and deeper shadows
  Through the mystery of the wood.

Dread closed fast and vague about her,
  And her thoughts turned fearfully
To her heart, if there some shelter
  From the silence there might be,
Like bare cedars leaning inland
  From the blighting of the sea.

Yet he came not, and the stillness
  Dampened round her like a tomb;
She could feel cold eyes of spirits
  Looking on her through the gloom,
She could hear the groping footsteps
  Of some blind, gigantic doom.

Suddenly the silence wavered
  Like a light mist in the wind,
For a voice broke gently through it,
  Felt like sunshine by the blind,
And the dread, like mist in sunshine,
  Furled serenely from her mind.

`Once my love, my love forever,
  Flesh or spirit, still the same,
If I failed at time of trysting,
  Deem then not my faith to blame;
I, alas, was made a captive,
  As from Holy Land I came.

`On a green spot in the desert,
  Gleaming like an emerald star,
Where a palm-tree, in lone silence,
  Yearning for its mate afar,
Droops above a silver runnel,
  Slender as a scimitar,

`There thou`lt find the humble postern
  To the castle of my foe;
If thy love burn clear and faithful,
  Strike the gateway, green and low,
Ask to enter, and the warder
  Surely will not say thee no.`

Slept again the aspen silence,
  But her loneliness was o`er;
Bound her soul a motherly patience
  Clasped its arms forevermore;
From her heart ebbed back the sorrow,
  Leaving smooth the golden shore.

Donned she now the pilgrim scallop,
  Took the pilgrim staff in hand;
Like a cloud-shade flitting eastward,
  Wandered she o`er sea and land;
And her footsteps in the desert
  Fell like cool rain on the sand.

Soon, beneath the palm-tree`s shadow,
  Knelt she at the postern low;
And thereat she knocked full gently,
  Fearing much the warder`s no;
All her heart stood still and listened,
  As the door swung backward slow.

There she saw no surly warder
  With an eye like bolt and bar;
Through her soul a sense of music
  Throbbed, and, like a guardian Lar,
On the threshold stood an angel,
  Bright and silent as a star.

Fairest seemed he of God`s seraphs,
  And her spirit, lily-wise,
Opened when he turned upon her
  The deep welcome of his eyes,
Sending upward to that sunlight
  All its dew for sacrifice.

Then she heard a voice come onward
  Singing with a rapture new,
As Eve heard the songs in Eden,
  Dropping earthward with the dew;
Well she knew the happy singer,
  Well the happy song she knew.

Forward leaped she o`er the threshold,
  Eager as a glancing surf;
Fell from her the spirit`s languor,
  Fell from her the body`s scurf;
`Neath the palm next day some Arabs
  Found a corpse upon the turf.
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