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Title: Beatrice
Author: Lewis Carroll [
More Titles by Carroll]
In her eyes is the living light
Of a wanderer to earth
From a far celestial height:
Summers five are all the span--
Summers five since Time began
To veil in mists of human night
A shining angel-birth.
Does an angel look from her eyes?
Will she suddenly spring away,
And soar to her home in the skies?
Beatrice! Blessing and blessed to be!
Beatrice! Still, as I gaze on thee,
Visions of two sweet maids arise,
Whose life was of yesterday:
Of a Beatrice pale and stern,
With the lips of a dumb despair,
With the innocent eyes that yearn--
Yearn for the young sweet hours of life,
Far from sorrow and far from strife,
For the happy summers, that never return,
When the world seemed good and fair:
Of a Beatrice glorious, bright--
Of a sainted, ethereal maid,
Whose blue eyes are deep fountains of light,
Cheering the poet that broodeth apart,
Filling with gladness his desolate heart,
Like the moon when she shines thro' a cloudless night
On a world of silence and shade.
And the visions waver and faint,
And the visions vanish away
That my fancy delighted to paint--
She is here at my side, a living child,
With the glowing cheek and the tresses wild,
Nor death-pale martyr, nor radiant saint,
Yet stainless and bright as they.
For I think, if a grim wild beast
Were to come from his charnel-cave,
From his jungle-home in the East--
Stealthily creeping with bated breath,
Stealthily creeping with eyes of death--
He would all forget his dream of the feast,
And crouch at her feet a slave.
She would twine her hand in his mane:
She would prattle in silvery tone,
Like the tinkle of summer-rain--
Questioning him with her laughing eyes,
Questioning him with a glad surprise,
Till she caught from those fierce eyes again
The love that lit her own.
And be sure, if a savage heart,
In a mask of human guise,
Were to come on her here apart--
Bound for a dark and a deadly deed,
Hurrying past with pitiless speed--
He would suddenly falter and guiltily start
At the glance of her pure blue eyes.
Nay, be sure, if an angel fair,
A bright seraph undefiled,
Were to stoop from the trackless air,
Fain would she linger in glad amaze--
Lovingly linger to ponder and gaze,
With a sister's love and a sister's care,
On the happy, innocent child.
Dec. 4, 1862.
[The end]
Lewis Carroll's poem: Beatrice
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