For I knew my secret then was one
That earth refused to keep:
Or land or sea, though he should be
Ten thousand fathoms deep.
"So wills the fierce avenging Sprite,
Till blood for blood atones!
Ay, though he's buried in a cave,
And trodden down with stones,
And years have rotted off his flesh,
The world shall see his bones!
"O, God! that horrid, horrid dream
Besets me now awake!
Again — again, with dizzy brain,
The human life I take;
And my red right hand grows raging hot,
Like Cranmer's at the stake.
"And still no peace for the restless clay
Will wave or mould allow;
The horrid thing pursues my soul,
It stands before me now!"
The fearful Boy looked up, and saw
Huge drops upon his brow.
That very night, while gentle sleep
The urchin eyelids kissed,
Two stern-faced men set out from Lynn,
Through the cold and heavy mist :
And Eugene Aram walked between,
With gyves upon his wrist.
"A jolly place," said he, "in times of old,
But something ails it now; the place is curst."
HART-LEAP WELL, BY WORDSWORTH.
SOME dreams we have are nothing else but dreams,
Unnatural and full of contradictions ;
Yet others of our most romantic schemes
Are something more than fictions.
It might be only on enchanted gound;
It might be merely by a thought's expansion;
But in the spirit, or the flesh, I found
An old deserted mansion.
A residence for woman, child, and man,
A dwelling-place, and yet no habitation ;
A house, but under some prodigious ban
Of excommunication.
Unhinged the iron gates half open hung,
Jarred by the gusty gales of many winters,
That from its crumbled pedestal had flung
One marble globe in splinters.
No dog was at the threshold, great or small;
No pigeon on the roof— no household creature
No cat demurely dozing on the wall
Not one domestic feature.
No human figure stirred, to go or come;
No face looked forth from shut or open casement:
there was no sign of home
From parapet to basement.
With shattered panes the grassy court was starred
The time-worn coping-stone had tumbled after;
And through the ragged roof the sky shone, barred
With naked beam and rafter.
O'er all there hung a shadow and a fear;
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is haunted!
The flower grew wild and rankly as the weed,
Roses with thistles struggled for espial,
And vagrant plants of parasitic breed
Had overgrown the dial.
But, gay or gloomy, steadfast or infirm,
No heart was there to heed the hour's duration;
All times and tides were lost in one long term
Of stagnant desolation.
The wren had built within the porch, she found
Its quiet loneliness so sure and thorough;
And on the lawn, within its turfy mound,
The rabbit made his burrow.
The rabbit wild and gray, that flitted through
The shrubby clumps, and frisked, and sat, and vanished,
But leisurely and bold, as if he knew
His enemy was banished.
The wary crow,
the pheasant from the woods,
Lulled by the still and everlasting sameness,
Close to the mansion, like domestic broods,
Fed with a "shocking tameness."
The coot was swimming in the reedy pond,
Beside the water-hen, so soon affrighted;
And in the weedy moat the heron, fond
Of solitude, alighted.
The moping heron, motionless and stiff,
That on a stone, as silently and stilly,
Stood, an apparent sentinel, as if
To guard the water lily.
No sound was heard, except, from far away,
The ringing of the whitwall's shrilly laughter,
Or, now and then, the chatter of the jay,
That Echo murmured after.
But Echo never mocked the human tongue;
Some weighty crime, that Heaven could not pardon,
A secret curse on that old building hung,
And its deserted garden.
The beds were all untouched by hand or tool;
No footstep marked the damp and mossy gravel,
Each walk as green as is the mantled pool
For want of human travel.
The vine unpruned, and the neglected peach,
Drooped from the wall with which they used to grapple;
And on the cankered tree, in easy reach,
But awfully the truant shunned the ground,
The vagrant kept aloof, and daring poacher :
In spite of gaps that through the fences round
Invited the encroacher.
For over all there hung a cloud of fear;
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is haunted!
The pear and quince lay squandered on the grass;
The mould was purple with unheeded showers
Of bloomy plums a wilderness it was
Of fruits, and weeds, and flowers!
The marigold amidst the nettles blew,
The gourd embraced the rose-bush in its ramble, The thistle and the stock together grew,
The hollyhock and bramble.
The bear-bine with the lilac interlaced ;
The sturdy burdock choked its slender neighbor,
The spicy pink. All tokens were effaced
Of human care and labor.
The very yew formality had trained
To such a rigid pyramidal stature,
For want of trimming had almost regained
The raggedness of nature.
The fountain was a-dry -- neglect and time
Had marred the work of artisan and mason,
And efts and croaking frogs, begot of slime,
Sprawled in the ruined basin.
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