IN PERE LA CHAISE,
Joaquin Miller
- I.
n avenue of tombs! I stand before - The tomb of Abelard and Eloise.
- A long, a dark bent line of cypress trees
- Leads past and on to other shrines; but o'er
- This tomb the boughs hang darkest and most dense,
- Like leaning mourners clad in black. The sense
- Of awe oppresses you. This solitude
- Means more than common sorrow. Down the wood
- Still lovers pass, then pause, then turn again,
- And weep like silent, unobtrusive rain.
- II.
- 'Tis but a simple, antique tomb, that kneels
- As one that weeps above the broken clay.
- Tis stained with storms; tis eaten well Away,
- Nor half the old new story now reveals
- Of heart that held beyond the tomb to heart.
- But oh, it tells of love! And that true page
- Is more in this cold, hard, commercial age,
- When love is calmly counted some lost art,
- Than all man's mighty monuments of war
- Or archives vast of art and science are.
- III.
- Here poets pause and dream a listless hour;
- Here silly pilgrims stoop and kiss the clay,
- Here sweetest maidens leave a cross or flower,
- While vandals bear the tomb in bits away.
- The ancient stone is scarred with name and scrawl
- Of many tender fools. But over all,
- And high above all other scrawls, is writ
- One simple thing; most touching and most fit.
- Some pitying soul has tiptoed high above,
- And with a nail has scrawled but this: "O Love!"
- IV.
- O Love !....I turn; I climb the hill of tombs
- Where sleeps the "bravest of the brave," below,
- His bed of scarlet blooms in zone of snow—
- No cross, nor sign, save this red bed of blooms.
- I see grand tombs to France's lesser dead,
- Colossal steeds, white pyramids, still red
- At base with blood, still torn with shot and shell,
- To testify that here the Commune fell;
- And yet I turn once more from all of these,
- And stand before the tomb of Eloise.