[Editor: This poem by Mary Eliza Fullerton was published in Moods and Melodies: Sonnets and Lyrics (1908).]
Eve. — I.
Those Oriental eyes what mirrored they
Of soul new jeopardized — its horoscope
Foreshowing ours? What other world did ope,
Unto the soul sent forth in fallen clay
From Eden? Ah, methinks there was a ray
That flashed from where despair and dread did grope,
And made an Eden of millennial Hope,
A passion doom nor loss could take away.
“I shall be mother of immortal men,
Who win their Edens out from lusts and tears,
By service of but three score years and ten;—
Sad years (He said), hard, stern, pathetic years,
The beaded brow, the blossomed life, and then
The blest “well done” reverb’rant in their ears.”
Source:
Mary E. Fullerton, Moods and Melodies: Sonnets and Lyrics, Melbourne: Thomas C. Lothian, 1908, p. 28
Editor’s notes:
clay = in the context of mankind, a reference to the idea that God made man out of clay; from Genesis 2:7 in the Old Testament of the Bible, “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul”, which has sometimes been referred to as God making man out of clay (e.g. “Man is made out of clay; he is an animal. Into the clay of man God has breathed the spiritual life; he is a son of God.”)
See: Rev. Lyman Abbott, “Conversion”, The Australian Town and Country Journal (Sydney, NSW), 13 August 1892, p. 9
Eden = the Garden of Eden, mentioned in the Bible; paradise
methinks = (archaic) I think (sometimes used in the sense of “it seems to me”)
ope = an archaic form of “open”
Thank you.