Legends and Lyrics, Pt 2 | Page 3

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from the 1890 George Bell and Sons edition.
LEGENDS AND LYRICS - SECOND SERIES
by Adelaide Ann Proctor

Contents:
A Legend of Provence
Envy
Over the Mountain
Beyond
A
Warning
Maximus
Optimus
A Lost Chord
Too Late
The
Requital
Returned--"Missing"
In the Wood
Two Worlds
A New
Mother
Give Place
My Will
King and Slave
A Chant

Dream-Life
Rest
The Tyrant and the Captive
The Carver's Lesson

Three Roses
My Picture Gallery
Sent to Heaven
Never Again

Listening Angels
Golden Days
Philip and Mildred
Borrowed
Thoughts
Light and Shade
A Changeling
Discouraged
If Thou
couldst know
The Warrior to his Dead Bride
A Letter
A
Comforter
Unseen
A Remembrance of Autumn
Three Evenings
in a Life
The Wind
Expectation
An Ideal
Our Dead
A
Woman's Answer
The Story of the Faithful Soul

A Contrast
The
Bride's Dream
The Angel's Bidding
Spring
Evening Hymn
The
Inner Chamber
Hearts
Two Loves
A Woman's Last Word
Past
and Present
For the Future
VERSE: A LEGEND OF PROVENCE
The lights extinguished, by the hearth I leant,
Half weary with a
listless discontent.
The flickering giant-shadows, gathering near,

Closed round me with a dim and silent fear.
All dull, all dark; save
when the leaping flame,
Glancing, lit up a Picture's ancient frame.

Above the hearth it hung. Perhaps the night,
My foolish tremors, or
the gleaming light,
Lent power to that Portrait dark and quaint -
A
Portrait such as Rembrandt loved to paint -
The likeness of a Nun. I
seemed to trace
A world of sorrow in the patient face,
In the thin
hands folded across her breast -
Its own and the room's shadow hid
the rest.
I gazed and dreamed, and the dull embers stirred,
Till an
old legend that I once had heard
Came back to me; linked to the
mystic gloom
Of that dark Picture in the ghostly room.
In the far
south, where clustering vines are hung;
Where first the old chivalric
lays were sung,
Where earliest smiled that gracious child of France,


Angel and knight and fairy, called Romance,
I stood one day. The
warm blue June was spread
Upon the earth; blue summer overhead,

Without a cloud to fleck its radiant glare,
Without a breath to stir
its sultry air.
All still, all silent, save the sobbing rush
Of rippling
waves, that lapsed in silver hush
Upon the beach; where, glittering
towards the strand,
The purple Mediterranean kissed the land.
All still, all peaceful; when a convent chime
Broke on the mid-day
silence for a time,
Then trembling into quiet, seemed to cease,
In
deeper silence and more utter peace.
So as I turned to gaze, where
gleaming white,
Half hid by shadowy trees from passers' sight,
The
Convent lay, one who had dwelt for long
In that fair home of ancient
tale and song,
Who knew the story of each cave and hill,
And every
haunting fancy lingering still
Within the land, spake thus to me, and
told
The Convent's treasured Legend, quaint and old:
Long years ago, a dense and flowering wood,
Still more concealed
where the white convent stood,
Borne on its perfumed wings the title
came:
"Our Lady of the Hawthorns" is its name.
Then did that bell,
which still rings out to-day,
Bid all the country rise, or eat, or pray.

Before that convent shrine, the haughty knight
Passed the lone vigil
of his perilous fight;
For humbler cottage strife or village brawl,

The Abbess listened, prayed, and settled all.
Young hearts that came,
weighed down by love or wrong,
Left her kind presence comforted
and strong.
Each passing pilgrim, and each beggar's right
Was food,
and rest, and shelter for the night.
But, more than this, the Nuns could
well impart
The deepest mysteries of the healing art;
Their store of
herbs and simples was renowned,
And held in wondering faith for
miles around.
Thus strife, love, sorrow, good and