Poetry

IN PERE LA CHAISE,

Joaquin Miller


  • I.
  • An 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.