Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/455

SISTER BEATRICE Dévote d'âme et fervente au service;

And thrice each day, their hymns and Aves sung,

At Mary's altar would before them kneel,

Keeping her vows with chaste and pious zeal.

Now in the Holy Church there was a clerk,

A godly-seeming man (as such there be

Whose selfish hearts with craft and guile are dark),

Young, gentle-phrased, of handsome mien and free.

His passion chose this maiden for its mark,

Begrudging heaven her white chastity,

And with most sacrilegious art the while

He sought her trustful nature to beguile.

Oft as they met, with subtle hardihood

He still more archly played the traitor's part,

And strove to wake that murmur in her blood

That times the pulses of a woman's heart;

And in her innocence she long withstood

The secret tempter, but at last his art

Changed all her tranquil thoughts to love's desire,

Her vestal flame to earth's unhallowed fire.

So the fair governess, o'ermastered, gave

Herself to the destroyer, yet as one

That slays, in pity, her sweet self, to save

Another from some wretched deed undone;

But when she found her heart was folly's slave,

She sought the altar which her steps must shun

Thenceforth, and yielded up her sacred trust,

Ere tasting that false fruit which turns to dust.

One eve the nuns beheld her entering

Alone, as if for prayer beneath the rood,

Their chapel-shrine, wherein the offering

And masterpiece of some great painter stood,— 425