There is a ray of stationary light
That shines on earth, less human than divine,
Calm, though allied with elements perturbed;
There is a Spirit ministrant on man,
That moulds his loftiest purposes to form,
Or gentle or heroic, that instils
Into his life the feeling of her own;
Watcher of griefs, beside the couch of pain
Presiding still; a comforter to hearts
Stricken with suffering, the nurse of hope
Whose cradle is her soul. All virtues rise
From her; love, faith, and meek-eyed charity.
Angels, those messengers of grace from heaven,
Created are from her; she drew them down
From Paradise, whose name is Woman still.

It was the hour when twilight casts beneath
Her mantle of the beautiful; when robed
In spiritual glory, colour steeps
Creation with her hues, and glides o'er earth,
Tinting each step in lustre; when the sun,
Throned o'er the western steep, looks through the clouds,
Softening the majesty it magnifies.
Athwart a landscape, through whose wooded depths
Rose the grey spire, and flashed the stream, the tints
Of Autumn's fingers touched the forms of things
With roseate hues; hues such as poets shed
O'er Arcady, or those Atlantic isles
Where man shaped paradise he found not here.
A grassy hill ascended from the vales
Crowned by a grot, round which light poplars stood,
Their crisp leaves shivering with a rain-like sound.

Upon the mossy bench Cornelia sat,
Astrophel at her feet. The spirit of peace
Whose respiration was the air breathed o'er:
His eyes were raised to her whose face was changed.
No more the Hebe of the azure orbs,
Shedding their star-light, but the shade of thought
From her brow cast as from a crystal vase.
The aspect of self-rooted faith dwelt on
His countenance, drawn from her on whom he gazed;
The Numa of old time, beside him she,
The Egerian spirit of his solitude.

In the first phase and change of circumstance
Speaks the quick thought of woman,
— " Astrophel!
You gaze upon me silently, and I
Look on your face as an unfolded book,
Whose page is opened, but its thought unread.
I feel that I am faith, yet look distrust,
While memory brings regrets repelled in vain."

" Cornelia, there is nought I prize like you;
Even fame, or, sinking that false word, the faith
To leave self-records among thoughtful men,
Fades into air, by you unheard. With song
Whose chords were wrought from nerves of our strong life,
I chained the crowd I could not hold. Such lays
To them were voices of a tongue unknown:
They knew not unproved passion, hate or love,
Less of ambition worshipped by the soul.
I wove no records from the finer threads
Of fancy's loom, or dwelt on fabled tales,
Vestured with sober tones and moral hues,
Encased in passionless unreality.
I gave forth revelations from the life;
Flashes of stormier lights seen through the clouds
Of murkiest passions, bodied to the eye;
Forms of remorse, of anguish and despair:
I bared the tree God-planted as it grew,
Contending with the wilder elements,
Dinted and cloven to its roots, bowed down,
But overthrown not, — suffering, but strong, —
Till the crowd, shouting, hailed the giant forms
Whose powers they knew not.
" Thus I overcame,
Even while foiled, and lost the wreath when won.
These are the life-ordeals ennobling still
Martyrs who prove them; these the ascents of truth,
By effort won and sleepless energy.
I glory in that strife, repulse shall be
A talisman of power that else had slept.
It has wrought on me even where you failed;
To wake from sloth, what woman's heart has quailed
When honour called her lover to the field?
I go to work undone, to discipline
Of exercise in strifes that poise the mind;
To watchfulness of our humanities,
And to the building up of that high verse
Won from confessional within the soul."

His voice rolled on, even as a solemn song,
Lightened with rays of a prophetic hope,
Even while each note of separation told.
" Thus ever has it fared, Cornelia,
The paths of joy are trodden, but unfelt
Till left behind: life streamlike lapsed beside;
We see but our reflection mirrored there,
In the impalpable, while borne along
The current of our being in its course.
The dial-plate of time whereon we carve
Fantastically hours, marks but our life
Whose name is process: Eden lives alone
In the repose from glorious effort won."
Even while he spake, like blossoms from the tree,
The films of beautiful illusion, fading,
Fell from Cornelia's eyes; each brightest hue
Cherished by hope, obscured. It was the tale
Of an enchantment told, a vision fled:
Beyond the Elysium opened cloudier skies.
She heard the sounds as of departing steps
From halls once bright with joy.
But the pure shrine
Of that fine temple, overcast awhile,
Still lightened: as the past dissolved beneath
The enchanter's voice, the present moulded life
To harmony, until she looked the faith
She drew while gazing on his face; she felt
Each accent stilled her spirit into rest,
To resignation and to quietude.

Meanwhile her hand had twined a laurel-branch,
Till from it she had woven a green wreath.
" Astrophel, take this symbol yet again;
The first, born from the brief hour, with it died,
Be this a memory that shall endure,
A spell of greater power than lock of hair,
Picture, or fleeting words. Hang up this crown
Where it shall meet your eyes, the first and last,
Waking and closed; remember it, a pledge
Woven by Cornelia's hand, symbol and type
Of the enduring by your spirit won.
Even as the seared leaves wither, so renew
Those that shall live undying on your brow.
When, stamped with world opinion, you return,
This relic with you bring. If I am not,
Then be it hung above my monument
Until the watcher sleeps."
He drew that form
Toward his own with a fine gesture scarce
Perceptible, yet was protection felt,
As of a tutelary presence near.

" Cornelia, all glides and passes from us;
Of those o'erwatching stars that smile on us,
As if eternal, change is their own law,
And they on earth who muse upon the bank,
Or sink within the stream, their end the same:
The motionless cloud, based rock-like on the air,
Momently changes, each aerial flake
In its fine fluctuation vibrating,
Till melted into nothingness. Vows pledged
To the Ineffable, or self-made gods,
Die in their utterance and are forgot:
Nought lives save the religion of the heart.
When these eyes cease to dwell on you, the shadow
Reflected on the vision of memory,
Shall walk by me a living presence still."