A Lost Eden Poem by Emily Pfeiffer

[AS IT WAS TOLD TO ME.]

You, dear, have heard me vaunt a memory
The which by trodden paths will carry me
Back into Eden, and you bid me tell
How from its first blind innocence I fell;
Give me your hand if now you care to see
That twilight world whereof I keep the key,
With leave to loiter where I may not dwell;
Lend me your ear if by my ministry
You would of Eden once more hear the old
Sad tale retold.

A cottage garden in the summer time,
The summer one fair moment past its prime
Fragrance of apples ripening to the core
Or dropped untimely in the crinkling kale,
The rarer fragrance of the rose no more,
The song of birds beginning just to fail;
The bees at work to hive their winter store,
With deep behind the lated notes, and hum
Of whirring wings, a sense of sleep to come;
A whisper in the air of something strange—
The foretaste of an underlying change;
As if the year, surcharged with its content,
Just overflowed the brim incontinent.

No homelier field for joy my native heart
Can image forth than this—my English heart
That grows more loyal with the lessening days;
No classic Vale of Tempé, where the part
Of nature hardly holds her own with art,
So takes its phantasy and tunes to praise.
And if among the sounds and silences,
The robin's song full-grown
Shaking his breast new blown,
The folded rapture of the diving bees,
The pauses in the kissings of the trees,
The intermitting sigh
Drawn in the wood near by,
Of island air which, burthened by the sea,
Holds, folds us to its heart so utterly
That, wandering lightlier in a sunnier land,
We miss the clasp as of a tender hand—
If over, under all is heard the ring
Of children's voices that recall the spring—

The sound of pattering feet in careless play
Trampling on fair decay,
Helping the season's unregarded woes,
Faint lily and fallen rose,
Their pallid, still unburied shames to hide—
I think that then among the haunts of pride
'Twere hard to find a spot so sweet as this,
So rare a nook as such a garden is,
For taking rest, and drawing quiet breath,
So meet a halting-place 'twixt life and death.

A garden once, and for one moment seen,
Lives yet within my memory ever green;
A lake of Time, whose broken waves are years
Long vanished, parts that moment from this hour,
But in that moment, fed by plenteous tears,
A seed grew quick, and threw a fatal flower
Which spread a flag as of devouring strife
And ultimate defeat o'er all of life:
Wherefor that once-seen garden grew to be
One with my thought, and very part of me.

It was as now, the matron summer-time,
The season paler than in early prime;
But oh, the apples seething on those trees
Were laughing fruits of the Hesperides!
And as they globed themselves against the sky,
The laden boughs they bent were yet too high
For hope of one who stood too near the earth,
The child but five years severed from her birth,
Who plucking from the ground with eager haste
The fairest of the windfalls dropped beneath
The boughs, which to her eyes
Were boughs of paradise,
Tapped their dull juices with her sharp milk teeth,
And finding nothing sweet enough to taste,
Let each one from her hands in wanton waste;
Alack, that childish sybarite was I.

Yes, it was I, and looking o'er that sea
Which parts the moment and the child from me,
Here as I stand and watch the shortening days
Melt from my gaze,
Now as the fair time glides from out my hands
Like sun-dried sands,
Through all the loss of years and all their gain
Life links me still in one unbroken chain
Of being with that five years' sybarite,
Seeking among the windfalls as they lay
Beneath the beckoning boughs, that from their height
Mocked her with unattainable delight,
Some fallen good not spotted overmuch,
Some apple tempting to the taste and touch,
And finding all unripeness or decay,
Casting them from impatient hands away.
Yes, looking now as from a far-off shore
Worn by the waves of years that are no more,
Launching my thought upon a widening sea,
That baffled seeker turns and looks with me:
I feel that child is I-know I am she.

In those young years
I had, in childish wont, within my breast,
Beating with many fears,
A heart—and for it such a home of rest,
So safe and sweet a place for hiding tears,
That grief forgot itself, and fear was drowsed,
In such a tender home securely housed.
I have found comfort since for many a grief,
And hiding places for the sweet relief
Of tears, and have appeased a singer's zest
Of life and joy in no unfruitful quest;
Strong arms still hold me to a heart as true
Whereof love's fountain springs for ever new;
And yet the wide world through
For me there can be never found again
A fortress so impregnable to pain
So sovereign a seat,
So sweet, and soft, and balmy a retreat
Against all harms,
All influence malign and vague alarms,
Mother, as that which, when a child I knew,
Rapt, shielded from the alien world by you.

For me you were immortal in those days,
Too high for question, and too good for praise;
I think, indeed, a being uncreate,
Beyond the touch of time or reach of fate.
I in the congregation at your side
Have sate at church, with stolen looks of pride
Wandering about you, travelling from your face
Along some 'broidered frill or end of lace,
And lo! the thing became immortal too,
And lives within me still as part of you!
Then scrutinising other mothers there,
I pitied other children that they were
Unlike to you; but all in furtive wise,
Fearing to vex those poorer children's eyes,
If following mine they lighted on my prize,
And seeing wealth they were not meant to share,
Of loss and want would suddenly be 'ware.

It was a morning world wherein I stood
With empty hands before the laden tree
Midmost that garden ever green for me.
A morning world, and this a morning hour,
When all had turned to fruit that was not flower,
Where every face was young, and most were fair,
Untouched by time, and lightly touched by care:
Parents and nurses, and the sweet remainder
Of fledglings in the nest with me, all tender
And soft; with honied breath, and the clear rose
Of morning's kiss upon the Alpine snows
Flushing their cheeks, and in their wide blue eyes
As in my own, a serious surprise
At all the pranks the big grown world was playing—
New mummeries for evermore essaying;
Now suited in a livery most discreet
All stuck with flowers to make it gay and sweet,
Then lying naked on the glistering strand
With cowrie-shells that dimpled the sea sand;
Or hiding ghostlike 'neath a snowy sheet;
Or like some elder, kinder far than wise,
Who thinks to cheat
Our livelier sense with solemn counterfeit,
Feigning to rain down comfits from the skies!

Ah, for a little moment might I stand
In that enchanted world with that lost band,
Fulfilled with love that was at peace with pride,
Soul-satisfied,
And find the darkness melt, the night grow clear,
If only I might hear
One voice and feel the touch of one soft hand!
But since that may not be, and I must grope
Among the ruins and the overthrow
Of all that was so fair and seemed so fast
In that removed but unforgotten past,
Still, love, who holdest hands with faith and hope,
I hold by thee and will not let thee go;
For see, I am, and shall be to the last
A child of charity,
Clasping her skirts and clinging to her knee,
Trusting that she with her free hand will reach
One day and put in mine
A fruit divine
That shall inform my soul beyond all speech.
And waiting to be fed and taught of thee,
I, love, in happy dream have seemed to see
That not the twilight world, the paradise
That stands revealed to little children's eyes
So surely is enchanted as the maze
Wherein we lose ourselves in latter days,
And that, when thou hast found and led us through,
O love, the vision that will meet our view,
Will break with something dearer than surprise
On those who recognise
In that lost world the symbol of the true—
The old as something dearer than the new.

But I must forth, I may no longer stay,
Must take my burthen up and go my way.
Well, as I stood so low and looked so high
At fair freaked apples painted on the sky,
I felt that in the open palm of me
Fruit of that tree,
Plucked from some ripest bough,
I knew not how,
Was laid; a perfect apple, sound and sweet,
Whereof I made essay,
But ere the teeth which pierced the rind could meet,
A vision came between me and the light
And set upon all things the mortal blight
Which never since has left them night or day.

It was a vision not of sin, but sorrow,
Which darkened all that morn and every morrow
For that child sybarite,
Gifted too young to read the weird aright.
No snake with cunning wile,
With subtle strength and beauty to beguile,
Had put within her grasp the longed-for prize,
The fruit whereof in tasting she grew wise
And sad for evermore;
Only a worn, uncomely face of eld
By those young eyes too suddenly beheld,
And keenly if not all unlovingly,—
Only the broken voice, the toothless smile
Of her who was the owner of the tree,
Bending to offer hospitality,
Had shown the child the door
Of that first paradise, wherefrom expelled,
Nothing that had its root upon this shore
Of time, could be as it had been before.

That night the child, awake upon her bed,
Lay shaken, struggling with a nameless dread.
The spectre that had hailed her forth alone
From that green garden to a world unknown,—
The shape of horror she divined beneath
Those faded rags and tatters of decay,
Grim tokens that had frightened joy away,—
The child had seen, I know not how, was Death.

Alas! the spectre seemed to pass her by,
To strike her to the heart and let her lie
In deadly pangs undying, while it sped
Unheard, with doomful tread,
To fling its shadow on a life more dear.
Then rose upon the night a cry of fear
Sharp as the brooding bird's that sees draw near
The terror of its kind—a hopeless cry,
Which woke it and the twain who slept a-nigh;
The child from whom the spectre frightened sleep
As it had frightened joy, in this dark hour
Content upon a hireling heart to weep.

The mother, deemed omniscient heretofore,
Appeared forlorn of help for evermore;
Clothed with immortal dearness, but no power
To awe that shadow beckoning to the grave—
With heart to suffer but no hand to save;
And thus that rath rebellious soul was hurled,
Thrust out from Eden on the dying world.

You think that fresh from happy fields above
I should have known and been upheld by love.
Not so; I saw a tyrannous cold Fate
Whose might no tears could move, no force abate;
And finding God's vicegerent dispossest,
That loved-one sent adrift with all the rest,
I hated the inexorable will
Which made hers nil.

Poor vagrant heart, whose hunger quelled the tide
Of tears, and forced the choking sobs aside,
When from imploring lips the question burst,
And of the blind you craved for guidance first.
Faint heart to-day as then unsatisfied,
Frail thought which flutters still with no sure guide,
How often some dull watchman of the night,
With bootless question have you sought to press,
Praying for hint or hope of morning light,
Well knowing night and darkness measureless.

One thought possessed me, but I could not give
The cruel revelation shape and live:
The mother dear beyond all thought must die;
Love could not hold his own,
Or summon help with his despairing cry,
But bleeding, overthrown,
Must under foot of Death for ever lie
And make his moan.

Withal I would not speak the word, give breath
In sign of my allegiance unto Death;
I was and am a rebel to his reign;
I would not own
The tyrant, though I saw him on his throne,
Foresaw my mutinous refusal vain,
And knew the cold clasp of the drowsy nurse
No shelter from his curse.

I would not let him forth, I barred the way,
Shut him within my heart as in a grave,
And only wailed a question of decay.
Her hair, would that too fade, must that go grey?
Was there no power in earth or heaven to save?
The hireling heart I pressed, in cruel play
Bandied my words, and through the void world ‘grey’
Went forth in dismal echo; that rude breath
Tearing the silence from the face of Death.

Then grief grew wholly inarticulate,
And only kept the night awake with cries;
Whereat the other hireling joined her mate,
And both looked on awhile with wondering eyes
Impatient of their interrupted sleep;
Until my passion seeming to abate
And spend its failing strength in tears and sighs,
I saw the hireling, barefoot women creep
Back to their rest, and leave me there to weep.

Where long I lay, and ofttimes cried in vain
To feel the beat of living heart again;
Till sleep, that gentlest nurse, of me took heed,
And hid me from the terrors of the night;
Sleep, ever slow to answer to my need
Or hear my call, what wandering love then sent
Comfort of thee for my abandonment—
Compelling from thee in thine own despite
Reluctant service till the morning light?

A new sun rose, and lit another day;
The child awoke, but not in paradise;
She saw in some strange, dark, and wordless way
Each soul built up in penitential wise,
A lonesome prisoner in a house of clay,
Severed from help of every other soul,
And day as night seemed dreadful in her eyes.
O love that liveth, love that maketh whole,
Rise, thou, within our hearts that we may rise;
But if no spark
Of thee for many days may cleave the dark,
Give us to look upon the naked skies
That lie beyond our reeking blasphemies,
And on the wastes of night
To see the stars thick-sown as seeds of light,
And from the circling heavens infer the One Sole Sun
Whose centre burns within each point of space
Here, and in what to us, as slaves of place—
Spirits of nether air—
Must yet seem otherwhere.

And further, love, I charge thee, I who stand
A lonely voice upon a stormy strand,
Hustled by those who crowd the wreck-strewn shore,
And only heard of thee above the roar,—
Forbid, great love, forbid that hearts of stone
Should deal with hearts of flesh as by their own!

Then through the morning silence of the house
The little feet, moved by a new unrest,
Went wandering, but ever one closed door
The vagrant childish step grew slack before,
Reluctant, yet half hoping to arouse
The mortal mother still by dreams possessed.

The mists of morning hang on childish thought;
I held no lucid image of the past,
I only felt the day was overcast,
Till from a shelf on high the apple caught
My listless gaze; there glowing, still intact,
Save for the delving teeth which had inwraught
Their signature upon the tender rind,
When, seized by that new terror in the act,
The sweet temptation I thenceforth resigned,—
That fatal fruit, stamped by those crescets twain,
Revived the meaning of the heart's dull pain.

Then went the little wandering feet once more
And paused again beside the still closed door,
A moment paused and listened, then, unbid,
The bar which cut her heart in twain undid.

Before a table, by a mirror tall
Cleft in the midst, a slender shape and small
(Though of the Gods her stature seemed to me!)
With golden-crested waves on waves of hair,
Which, falling from her, overflowed the chair
And hid her from my sight in silken pall,—
There sate in smiling, sweet serenity
The mother who must die,—O heart of mine!
The mother who has died so many years
Agone, that almost thou art grown supine,
And, long bereft, art now forlorn of tears.

The picture of a woman young and fair
Gleamed in the mirror, but I saw not that;
Meseems I held the finest silken hair
That had its root in her, worth gazing at
More than her surface image, cold and flat;
For, pressing to her knees, I watched, large-eyed,
The while she combed and shook out strand by strand,
Smiled at and spread abroad in careless pride
The fading glory; then I made my nest
Within it, to her side more closely prest,
And thence, with gentle touch on one smooth band,
I laid the blessing of a child's soft hand.

My heart that in its day, I think, had beat
A timely cradle-tune, has never known
The claim which tender pity makes so sweet,
When all the wants and weaknesses in one
Wake it, and keep it waking with the cry
Which parts the speechless lips of infancy.
My part in love has been to take his fee,
He came full-handed, and so bides with me;
And yet I know that mute, without a word
Wherewith to give it shape in secret thought,
A love that was a mother's in me stirred
That morning as I stood beside her chair,
Stroking with tender touch my mother's hair,
Striving with thoughts I had no wit to tell,
Stilling the cry of grief incurable,
Because I feared for her, serene and fair,
To wake the dormant woe I knew too well
Had home within her heart as everywhere.

Yea verily, unto the five-years' child,
After the midnight anguish, came the first
Throb of that vital love, that undefiled,
Which lights, or leads us darkly through the worst
Beguilements of a wilderness accurst;
Not that which sucks at life and still cries ‘Give!’
But love whereby the worlds and all things live:
That which our being feels alone to be:
My mother's love that was alive in me
Drew me that day a step towards the sun
Wherein our lonely lives arise as one.

So was I lifted from my first despair
Out of the fleeting shadow of her hair,
And from a passing glimpse of love's own peace
Given to know that it has power to bless
All sorrows, and to flood the wilderness.
God give our fainting hearts its sweet increase.