Legend of a Veil

SEVEN hundred years ago, a pair on whomThe accidental honor of a crownHad worthily fallen, in their morning hourOf bridal bliss, stood hand in hand, and gazedInto a world which love makes Eden still;Leopold of Austria and his Swabian bride.The old baronial rampart where they stoodFrowned down upon Vienna, that smiled back.They, in the open balcony of oak,Sunlit and airy, saw the wide earth bloomAround them like one flower, as lovers will:And, for a while, they silently were glad.Then, out of his full joy, young Leopold spoke:

"Beloved, see this beauteous realm of mine,Whereof thou reignest queen. How all things smileTo welcome thy sweet looks! How every herbAnd bough and thicket upward sends to theeA pleasant smell! And He is surely pleased,Who sits above the sun, and makes the worldBlossom with gladness,—He is surely pleasedTo see us stand here happy in His sight.Yet not even love brings satisfying bliss:No joy that overflows must run to waste.And work awaits us in this Paradise,—Where thou shalt be my helpmeet; thou, mine Eve!Rulers are gardeners only. Thou and IWill toil among the earth-bedraggled vinesAnd frost-nipped blossoms of humanity,Till life around looks fresh as Nature does,Sunned in our love, and in the smile of God.

"Before I saw thy face, the mother of ChristWas ever as a light amid my thoughts,Charming me forth unto heroic deeds;Showing the way of lowly sacrificeWhere kingly souls with her dear Son must walk.My Agnes, from thy gentle eye distilsA ray more luminous in its tendernessThrough every inmost channel of resolve.Thy woman's soul with my man's mind shall blend,One work, one inspiration: I shall ruleNobly through thee, my bride, my beautiful!"

As one who tunes a flute among the hills,And hears, entranced, the music eddying backIn palpitating echoes through the air,All unaware that he awoke that joy,Agnes took softly up her husband's wordIn charmed unconsciousness:

In charmed unconsciousness: "O beautiful life,O beautiful world, wherein I live with thee!Thanks unto God, who made thee first my friend,Then lover and husband. Little would it beTo stand beside thee here, thy wife and queen,Were I not raised to nobler eminence,Lifted to share with thee both work and thought,Mate of thine aspirations. Friend, best friend,And dearest always by that name to me,Because the name is an immortal one,—Might I not look as now in thy soul's eyes,And feel thy love through larger and through less,Diffusing calm, opening new wells of joyThat rise beyond expression, making allI share with thee as sacramental food,What had been left? The thought is bitter bleak:Dreary and gray as the Siberian wilds,Had spread my life. But God would still have been:I should have met him in the wilderness,Thee, afterward, perhaps, in Heaven.

Thee, afterward, perhaps, in Heaven. Mine own!Whene'er I hear the convent vesper-bell,Or echo of a midnight cloister-chant,The manly chorals in sonorous praiseResponding to the unseen sisters' hymn,I think there may be hearts like thine and mine,Hidden behind the nun's veil and the cowl,Forever separated, yet so near!God listens through the screens they cannot lift;The chords lost here ring full in heaven. And yet'T is surely better to strike all the keysOf this our manifold being to His praise,Sending through low and high, through discords even,One thrill of unison. All we have is His,And we ourselves; and we will live so here,That in that land where are no marriages,We shall forever in one mansion dwell,Still finding Heaven in some joint work for Him.

Ah, what can Heaven be, and this earth so fair?River that waterest Eden, art thou thenMore glorious than our Danube, when the doorsOf the East are open, and the sunshine poursUpon his path between the solemn hills,And over the green, grateful fields? And thou,City of Light, aglow with jasper wallsAnd gates of pearl, art thou more beautifulThan our Vienna, lifting up her handsTo us from cottage-lattice, tower, and spire,Beckoning from her innumerable livesThat we can bless, and shall?

That we can bless, and shall? O royal life,Royal to all who carry royal hearts,Thou shalt be benediction to our realm!Let us build tabernacles here, beloved,On durable foundations of deep bliss.Upon some height let us set up a house,A home for holy men, to sanctifyThe memory of this, our marriage-day."

So spake that happy bride, and upward lookedTo meet the answer of her husband's eyes.Bending, he lifted her white, floating veil,And touched her forehead with his lips, and saidWith reverent earnestness, "We will."With reverent earnestness, "We will." The wind,The only listener passing, heard their vow,And suddenly and lightly took the veilAnd bore it far along the orange-boughs,And over the rose-gardens all in bloom,And hid it in the green woods out of sight.

Then Leopold sent out squires to bring it back,For Agnes' sake, who could not bear to loseOne token of their married happiness;But none could find it. And the cheerful yearsPassed over them like days, filled to the brimWith princely undertakings, and perfumedWith gratitude, which every princely heartTakes as a spur to steadier energy,And fervor of well-doing: so the vowOf that fair morning from their memory passed.

Years after, as a summer twilight fell,Giving his flagging steed a languid rein,Duke Leopold let his huntsmen homeward rideFar out of sight before him. Through a glenHe loitered on, where never hoof had trod,Crushing the juicy bracken and crisp turf,All spray, and spice, and coolness; under pinesThat lifted their green tops like minster-spiresInto blue light above, and hid their ranksOf spectral stems and dimly-woven boughsIn deeper than cathedral gloom behind.Out of the wood a silent rivulet stole,And caught the red of sunset, and then creptInto the shadow of the beckoning ferns.A bird trilled from a bush: within the woodAnother answered; then a hundred sang.The shivering sweetness through the bracken passed,And Leopold halted. Standing by his steed,Against the darkened forest, with the glowOf sunset falling on his upturned brow,Strange peace enthralled him; and subdued he said,"This is a holy place, a holy hour:Here might the angels walk."

Here might the angels walk." Even while he spoke,He caught a glimpse of wavering whiteness swayedWithin a dingle close at hand. ThereatStartled one moment, instincts of a knightIn the next spurred him towards the mystery,And lo, the veil of Agnes! It had hungHere, in the sanctuary of the wood,Heaven-kept, while robber-tempests went and came,With the birds singing round it, and the flowersFilling it with perfume, from spring to spring,In token of a promise unfulfilled.Leopold was touched. Yet, thridding a blind pathOut of the glimmering twilight of the pines,"Ever," he said, "I doubted if the monksPraised God so well as many an honest serf,Who earned his bread and ate it thankfully.They pitch their notes too high for humble folk,And call the common singing sacrilege.If peasants thank our Lord for anything,It is for wife, and little ones, and home,As I for my sweet Agnes and her babes.No saintly joy is this, the brethren say,And pity us and pray for us, and wrapThemselves in cloaks of sanctity, and walkTheir shining road to heaven above our heads,—Pavement of gold that we must keep repaired,Whate'er befalls us in the thoroughfare,Or on the broken bridge across the chasm.Labor, methinks, and prayer are of one piece.Nay, toil is also praise, the best, from thoseWhose ringers are more flexile than their tongues.

"Alack! what do I murmur to myself?Agnes would grieve to overhear these thoughts.She likens prayers and hymns unto a streamFlowing amid the sandy wastes of life,Watering the roots of action; nerving upThe earnest toiler's strength; the wine of heaven.Our priests sit at the guarded fountain-head,To keep the waters pure, and pour the wineFor fainting pilgrims. Niggardly it were,Saith she, to grudge them shelter, who prepareA tent for us amid the wilderness.And Agnes is to me what all these hymnsAnd chants and mighty chorals are to her,—A glorious lifting-up; to heart, delight;To hands, unbounded strength. I would I wereA good King Robert for her sake, to veinThe court and camp with rills of saintly song,A thrill of Veni Sancte SpiritusTo waken underneath the satin scarfsAnd ermine mantles of my followers.I am but Leopold, an ungifted man,Save for my ducal crown and her dear love.A vow is still a vow, though tardily kept.She shall behold a stately cloister builtWithin the glen that hid her bridal veil.And I will toil on, hoping yet to seeEach hut within my realm a home like mine,And every peasant happy as a duke."

So Kloster-Neuberg rose among the hills;There Agnes' veil is shrined, and Leopold thereIs worshipped as a saint.

Is worshipped as a saint. Good man, he sleepsToo soundly to be vexed by anythingThat may be said or sung above his grave.Perhaps he would have thought the monks misplacedThe aureole that they set upon his brow,Not on his bride's. No doubt he would have askedTo be remembered for some other workThan convent-building: but he could not choose;He is a saint perforce. The healthier graceOf honorable manhood counts him naught,And less than naught his household happiness:Within the threshold laid by wedded joy,The very thought of it is sacrilege.

And yet the buried sweetness of true loveThat once hung rose-wreaths round the Austrian throne,The brethren with a deprecating sighWill sometimes air, unfolding Agnes' veil.