Go! and the blight of exile be thy doom,
An everlasting wo oppress thy soul.
Thou art his murderer!' she shrieked and fell!
Into these arms, these murderous arms she fell,
And breathed her being from her shivered heart!
"I turned away, and then, true Heaven! I saw
The sun just sinking with his blood-red disk,
And heard the echo of the night-dream sound!
'Wretch! now in truth thy mission is all done,
Thy doom self-sealed, thy wretchedness ensured!
Go thou and be a wanderer o'er earth,
A fugitive, a vagabond in life,
And bear that torturing spirit in thy breast,
Whose living strength shall kill thy future peace!'
"O Night of anguish following then that sun!
O Darkness dread, thou type of Hell's dark doom!
What language e'er could tell thy horrors now?
In thy dim realms fiends danced around my path,
Rent my sore flesh with sharpened claws of hate,
And reveled madly through my stiffened hair;
Ten thousand hands closed round my quaking form,
With giant grasp, and lifted me aloft ;
Swift through the air they hurried me away,
Then hurled me headlong from on high, to fall
In circles terrible on shivered rocks;
Often within the compass of a point,
I felt myself compressed, then swelling out
To the dimensions vast of upper worlds;
Down 'mid the Ocean with my form they sped,
And held me there for seeming ages long,
To gasp for breath, yet scarcely then to breathe;
There, on through endless labyrinths they rushed,
Where caves terrific glowered upon my soul,
And fierce sea-monsters glared and growled in spite ;
Till, rising thence, they left the sea's domain,
And dragged me up the loftiest mountain-steeps,
There to endure perennial Winter's cold,
'Mid deepest beds of everlasting snows!
Swift thence they bore me when it seemed that Time
Had swept his nameless cycles o'er those heights,
Far to the sun-burnt desert, through its sands
To wade for centuries oppressed with thirst,
With no green spot upon the arid wild,
Where springs and shades, whose life-renewing power
Might quench my lip, or cool my sun-charred feet,
Or rest my fevered frame one moment's length.'
Then through the surface of the earth I seemed
Far downwards to be drawn with power unspent,
Through stubborn soils and still resisting rocks,,
That tore my vitals and my frame apart,
Till in earth's centre they were all reformed,
And cast into a crucible, 'neath which
Unending fires blazed fiercely round and round.
Here rolled a mighty sea of molten gold,
Into whose currents ghastly giants hurled
Huge masses of the precious ore to melt,
That as they fell amid the seething tide,
Sent myriad sparks, with glow and heat intense,
Shooting like stars that course the paths of Heaven.
'Mid this metallic sea I then seemed plunged,
And made to writhe in anguish undefined;
By fiends down driven to unmeasured depths,
Burning I sank to struggle there in vain ;
Then after countless years, from that deep Hell
Swiftly transported to the Arctic zone-
Oh! horrors nameless of that dread extreme!-
They led me wandering wildly up and down
Its frozen sea, to brave fierce polar frosts,
To climb o'er icebergs crackling to their base,
Or sink beneath them as they toppled o'er;
Thus on, through varied series of distress,
In endless torments of succession long! 26
"O Night of fears! O Sleep of Hell's foretaste! How could the spirit or the flesh endure
The agonies that crowded on me then?
Did I not hail the morning? No! I shrunk
From the first day-beam on my chamber wall,
For morning brought sad tidings of my deed,
With all its woful images of death.
Did they not come to hale me to the cell?
No! but to entreat my presence at the grave,
As a tried mourner, for an idle tale
They deemed the ravings of that prophet-girl,
And said he died from some spasmodic stroke.
Ha ha! I went, I saw them both in death,
Hand clasped in hand and side by side reposed,
All decked with chaplets of sweet blooming flowers! 27
Did I not tremble o'er my victims then?
No! the fell fiend with courage filled
my soul! I saw them laid below,—and is it true?
Aye true, I cast the earth on them, when spoke
The voice ashes to ashes, dust to dust,'
Oh! that green sod closed all of life for me!
Away! my home deserted, o'er the earth I roamed,
Hither and yon where'er the dark fiend drove,
And thus for years have roamed, to pass each night,
When sleep comes o'er me, in these torturing dreams,
Or in a lingering wakefulness, as now,
Till morning brings the stories of the Past.
Here, here at last one little drop of rest
Falls on my parching soul to ease its thirst,
For in these sombre regions waked at night,
I seem to have a respite from my rack,
Filling my vision with stupendous forms,
That drive usurping images away,
And drowning voices, full of thrilling notes,
In the deep echoes of the falling tide.
But ho! the midnight fails me, and the morn
Scatters his radiant seed o'er fields of space;
Alas! the sun comes up, and brings again
Those shapes of piercing agony to me;
I see them all-the strife, the prize, the lot,
The wood, the stream, the bank, the dead, the grave!
Oh! misery unending, shall mine be
In yon futurity a darker lot?
What if I add to twofold murder now
The guilt of suicide? Will it enhance
The anguish of my soul? It scarce can be!
For now it seems as if th' eternal Mind
Could not devise worse torments for the damned,
In other worlds, than those I now endure.
Yet hath he not resources infinite
Wherewith to chain the spirit down in Hell?
Ah! when I've grown familiar with my pain,
And almost hugged my tortures to my heart,
With love for them which habit generates,
Have I not found a new-born torture sweep
Its painful fingers o'er my heart's strained chords?
Is not the soul with such capacity
Endowed, of full extent, as makes it fit
To bear the most o'erwhelming miseries,
Uncrushed and unannihilated still,
Such as we dream not of nor tongue can speak?
Aye! we shall find it thus in future worlds!
Yet seek I death despite its coming ills.
Oft has the fiend with curses urged me on,
To cease my being in yon angry tide,
But dark forebodings make me linger yet;
E'en now he whispers in mine ear the hope
"Twill be, at least, a change from state to state,
That of itself may bring a moment's ease,
While thou, curst sufferer, mak'st thy passage hence,
|