The Poetical Works of T. Buchanan Read

Strikes himself with venomed fangs, And writhes in the dust with selfdealt pangs.

Then in my agony's wild excess I partly swooned, and the pain grew less;

While a form, not all devoid of kindness,

Seemed leaning o'er me in my blindness,

And whispered in my aching ear Words which then were sweet to hear.

"Hast thou no friend?' the spirit said,

Who would rejoice wert thou not dead?

Who in his heart would call thee back
Into the world's green, visible track?
If such an one there be,

Whose soul yearns constantly for thee,
Hearken, and when his voice is heard
Breathing one recalling word,
Arise and hasten, the veil is then
Lifted, and thou mayst return again!
And it shall be thy fate, perchance,
To see the long dull years advance,
And still a bloodless ghost to be
For many a weary century,
When all whom thou hast loved are
fled

Into the regions overhead.

Then drearier far that world will be, With its homes and haunts reminding

thee

Of the loved and lost, than even this,
Where the vampire Pain enthronéd is.
But be thou ever wary and wise,
Gazing with unsleeping eyes,
And thou, perchance, shalt find ere
long

Some spirit, racked with sin
wrong,

Aweary of Life's daily goad
And sinking under her dusty load,
Who, with rash and desperate hand,
Is about to sever the mortal band
Which binds her down, as once didst
thou,

To be the shadow which thou art now.
At such an hour be thou then near,
And when the spirit shall disappear,
And the deserted form

Lies beside thee, silent, warm,
Like a suit of mail in hot disdain
Discarded on a battle-plain,

He beheld a crimson light

Toiling up the jagged path,

Driving shoreward through the Chased by the billows in their wrath,

Suddenly at his feet a form

Lay like an offering from the storm!
White as a stranded wreath of foam,
White as a ghost from its charnel
home,

It lay where the gust with blinding
flight

Strove to hide the shape from sight,
Like a maniac murderer, to and fro
Raving and flinging the scattering

snow

Over the victim that mocks his despair

With its unveiled face and tell-tale stare!

A moment the brave man's heart recoiled,

Bearing the dripping shape away
Which the sea had deemed its prey.

Thus laden, Roland among the rocks Strove upward 'mid the desperate shocks

Of wind and wave-climbing a track
As crooked as that on the tempest's
wrack,

Where the arméd Thunder in his ire
Descends in a zigzag path of fire!
The long black hair

Of the drownéd form he strove to
bear,

Flashed abroad on the wet sea-air,
Wild as the tresses of Despair:
And he thought, as he gazed on the
drooping head

Where the writhing locks were so
wildly spread,

Of the twisted horrors Medusa wore-
And a shudder pierced him to the

core.

But now he heard, or deemed he
heard,

The sound of that most piteous word,
That only word the full heart knows
To syllable its joys and woes,—
A sigh! Like a night-bird sweeping

near,

Its soft wing fluttered past his ear, And he felt the heave of the rounded breast

Which close against his own was prest:

Then through his frame he took new strength,

And with upward toiling gained at length

The gusty height! A moment there, While the lightning lent its sheeted glare,

That group stood in the misty air Then he lifted the body and upward Like statues on a terrace high,

toiled.

Relieved on a dusky wall of sky.

VI.

IT was a sight both wild and dread
To see the living for the dead-
One stubborn and unaided form-
Battling with an ocean storm,—

VII.

INTO the care of a gray-haired crone, The sibyl who tended his dull hearthstone,

He yielded the body. A couch was spread,

And the lady was laid as she were not dead;

And the dame from off the swooning face

Smoothed the wet locks into their place;

And Roland, when the salt seaspray

Which blurred his vision was cleared away,

Holding a white torch, bent to trace
The features of that sleeping face.
His heart stood still!
His blood ran chill!

His wide eyes could not gaze their

fill!

And as his marvelling face was drawn Nearer and nearer to stare thereon

Slowly-slowly as a veil

Lifted from a phantom's visage pale,
The lady's delicate lids were raised,
And in Roland's face the soft orbs
gazed

With all that touching tenderness
Which only loving eyes express.

He had clasped the ghost of his beloved,

And not a tremor in his soul was moved

From lips of air had taken the kiss, With not a fear to mar the bliss,And heard what the threatening demon said,

With a pang of pain but not of dread!

But now an icy horror stole

While the thought of pain which shadowed her brow

Said, "Roland, ah! Roland, thou lovest me not now!"

When a great tear stole from under her lid,

And rebukingly over her white cheek slid:

Then Roland cried as he clasped her hand,

"Tis a dream that I cannot understand!

Forgive me, dear Ida, if even I seem To wrong thy sweet shade in the dark of a dream!"

"Oh,

And

joy! Thou hast called me dear Ida,'" she cried,

she lovingly drew him more close to her side.

That voice-'twas the same he had heard in gone days,

While she poured in his eyes as of old her soft gaze.

Then she sighed—“Ah! dear Roland, a vision it seems ?To me 'tis the sweetest of all waking dreams!

And let me recount in this hour of bliss

How I fled out of the past into this, Escaping from Death's black precipice.

VIII.

"FAR back in that dark desperate

hour,

When the swart mandragore had

power,

Through the deepest depths of his in- While the suicidal draught, like flame,

A shaft which I had winged with flame
And sped-and yet could not reclaim!
I saw thy high soul with the blow
Struck to the dreary plains of woe,
Yet struggling in its fall, as when
An eagle, sailing with sunward ken,
Receives from the heartless archer's
bow

The envious arrow winged from below.

"Then I felt thy hasty farewell kiss, A touch of mingled torture and bliss; And my soul within me writhed with pain

That I could not return that kiss again. And then you fled! I heard the door Swing loud behind-and heard no

more.

My very soul then swooned-and all Was blacker than midnight's starless pall.

And more I know not-till a long cool breath

Came into my breast and chased out Death

Or that dark sleep which did counterfeit

Black Death so well, that I scarcely yet Can realize the miracle

Which finds me freed from his dreamless spell.

“Then I awoke, and saw the room Tricked out with all the pompous gloom

Of funeral weeds-the air was sick With incense-fumes suspended thick And blue, as at morn o'er a stagnant lake

Swings the venomous mist ere the winds awake.

There I saw two tapers with fiendish glare

Burning in the ghastly air; And my breast with horrible pain was weighed,

As if by the weight of a black dream made.

I found it was a cross of gold Which lay on my bosom so heavy and cold

A cross entwined with lily-bells, And framed in a wreath of immortelles.

A garland of flame-a cross of fireAnd I outstretched on a martyr's pyre

| Had been less terrible !-So at last, By struggling I grew strong, and cast These emblems of death from off my breast,

And, breathing, felt no more opprest.

"Then you should have heard the shriek

Of Death's stout ward 'ress!-Pale and weak,

She reeled and tottered beyond the door,

And fell in a fit on the marble floor. She awoke a maniac-her hair turned gray

And a maniac she goes to this very day.

"Then the household and the priest came in

The priest in his robe as black as sin!

All shuddered and shrank; till I rose and smiled,

When they rushed to my side with wonder wild,

And cried, in their mingled joy and dread,

'She lives! Our Ida is not dead!'

And the light barque neared like a leaping hound;

But the skipper knew, as now we know,

That it was only the hungry Storm, Crouching back with his awful form, The better that he might spring and light

Down on the unsuspecting night!

"The sail was furled,-the hatch made fast,

But, seeing what I had done, I sunk
And swooned on the breast of the And the friar and I sat close to the

dear old monk!

"Then, half awaking, I felt the mo

tion Beneath me of a summer ocean,

mast.

Then came the dark and the roaring

gale,

And we sailed as an autumn leaf

might sail,

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