The Passing of the Storm, and Other Poems. Alfred Castner King
and received
Is soon unconsciously believed.
Though inconsistent and abstract,
Fanned by insinuating tongues,
Imaginary faults and wrongs
Soon gain the currency of fact.
The purest acts are misconstrued
By the lascivious and lewd,
And envy loves to lie in wait
With fangs imbrued in venomed hate.
This slander, born of jealousy,
Was told as solemn truth to me,
By tongues I deemed immaculate.
Alas! that shafts from falsehood's bow
Should undetected cleave the air,
Or wanton hands in malice sow
The tares of discord and despair.
For every seed of falsehood sown
Brings forth a harvest of its own,
And ears, most ready to believe,
Are difficult to undeceive.
Alas! that shafts from falsehood's tongue
Should fall suspicious ears among,
And be received, and nursed, forsooth,
As arrows of unblemished truth:
Maligning spotless innocence,
With grave impeachments of offence.
Their crime, of heinous crimes the worst,
With multiplied damnation cursed,
Who, lost to every sense of shame,
Assassinate a woman's name.
For such, with trumped-up calumnies,
Would drag an angel from the skies,
And stain its vestal robes of white
With slander's sable hues of night,
Holding to ridicule and shame
The ruins of a once fair name.
Who so, from slander's chalice sips,
May greet you with a friendly kiss,
Nor may the foul, envenomed lips
Betray the adder's sting and hiss.
The fairest flowrets of the field
The rankest poisons often yield,
And falsehood loves to hide her tooth
'Neath the habiliments of truth.
This scandal, venomous and vile,
Had no foundation but a smile,
But on it wagging tongues had built
A massive pyramid of guilt.
In evil hour, I, too, believed
For fabrications more absurd
Than the aspersions I had heard
Have wiser ears than mine deceived.
I fought suspicion, vainly tried
To cast each rising doubt aside.
But he who lists to tales of ill
Believes in part, despite his will.
Then in my face, as in a book,
She read one sad distrustful look,
A look of pity, yet of doubt,
For silence cries most loudly out,
And who can smile with visage bright
To shield misgivings black as night?
Unhappy trait that in us lies!
We doubt the verdict of our eyes;
We doubt each faculty and sense,
Yet credit sham and false pretence.
We question Truth, and much prefer
To list to Falsehood, than to her:
And that, which most substantial seems,
We doubt, yet place our faith in dreams.
We doubt the pearl of purest white,
We doubt the diamond clear and bright,
And yet accept the base and flawed,
Yes, revel in all forms of fraud.
That moment's lack of confidence,
The shadow of remote offence,
Cost each the sweetest joys of life,
Cost her a husband, me a wife.
Ere yet that month its course had spent,
In time's continuous descent,
Her face had been forever hid
Beneath the sod and coffin lid.
Then slanderous tongues forgot their lies,
And wagged in glowing eulogies.
Though tears, the pearls of sorrow be,
And many o'er her grave were shed,
Mine was a tearless agony,
A deeper, dry-eyed grief instead.
That rumor, void of fact or proof,
Too late betrayed the cloven hoof.
Too late, alas! 'twas given me
To recognize its falsity.
Within a rural burial place,
A rude, though quaint, necropolis,
Where, through the growth of hemlock trees,
Is borne the requiem of the breeze;
Where stand the funeral pines as plumes,
Above the scattered graves and tombs,
And sigh, with drooping branches spread,
In sylvan dirges for the dead;
Beneath a fir tree's sombre shade,
My last adieu to her was made.
Close by the slab of graven stone,
Which marks her place of silent rest,
I knelt at midnight, and alone,
Then rose and started for the West."
The wind in temporary lull,
Had dwindled to a plaintive moan;
As if in mournful monotone,
Her cup of anguish being full,
Sad nature's fountain-heads of bale
Had overflowed with plaint and wail.
In palpitating throbs of woe,
It now arose and whirled the snow
With triple energy renewed,
Filling the dismal solitude
With woeful shriekings of despair,
As demon orgies in the air,
And culminated in a roar
More violent than aught before.
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