Classic Poem

The lady standing beyond the door,
Like one whose despair can bear no more,
Shrieked a fiendish shriek of wrath;
And, with a hollow sepulchral sound,
Her body fell upon the ground
And lay a corpse along the path!

And then a shadow, like a cloud
On a hissing whirlwind fierce and loud,
Swept seaward, pierced with curses and shrieks,
Which like the lightning's fiery streaks
Flashed mad! through the twilight shades,
Cleaving the air with sulphurous blades!
Then the people ran to the headland height
With the fascination of wonder and fright, —
And saw the little dragon bark,
Speeding out to the eastern dark —
Away and away, as swift and bright
As a red flamingo's sudden flight.

And climbing the black rocks high and higher
They gazed and gazed with aching sight, —
Till into the distant realm of night
They saw it pass — a ship on fire!

Then Roland, who gazed on the body which lay
In the path, a loathsome shape of clay,
Defiled by a fiend and cast away,
Called to the sturdy sacristan,
Who came, a shuddering, awe-struck man,
And bade him with his graveyard crew
Bear and bury the thing from view.
But when they strove, with fear and disgust,
To raise that form which once had been
The temple of Beauty and then of Sin.
It fell from their hands a mass of dust, —
Like a cavern of sand, so fragile and thin,
That a single touch will shatter it in; —
Or like a long-consumed brand,
Whose form in the ashes seems to stand,
From whence the hungry flame has fled
And left it a thing devoured and dead,
Which the lightest touch of the lifting hand
Shivers to nothing, a shapeless mass; —
Thus the body fell, and lay on the grass
A crumbled pile at their startled feet,
As if it had been consumed by the heat
Of that most subtle and fiery fiend
Which so long it had fearfully harboured and screened!
Days dawned and set, and year by year
The bride became more fair and dear;
And Roland saw with secret delight,
As her face grew more refined and bright,
How through every feature it seemed
That the light of his long-lost Ida beamed!
And by degrees her softening voice
Like Ida's made his heart rejoice;
Until, when the first few years had flown,
He forgot that his early love had died,
And walking at his lady's side,
He called her " Ida, " and she replied
To the name as it had been her own.

Never more to that lonely height,
Where only the wild birds of the sea
Peopled the gusty balcony,
He turned his feet; but lived and moved
Among his fellows — revered, beloved;
And the world was no more a world of blight,
But a realm of sunshine, warm and bright
With his brooding grief no longer blind,
This simple truth his soul discerned, —
And well it were for all mankind
Had they the selfsame lesson learned, —
That it is not in the world abroad,
In the sight of men and the light of God,
That fierce temptations chiefly dwell;
But in the misanthropic cell,
Where the selfish passions are all enshrined
And worshipped by one darksome mind.