Classic Poem

Still leaning on her lover's breast,
The spirit thus her crime confessed: —

" O Roland! from too much loving thee,
From fear thou wert not wholly mine,
My lips partook of misery,
And left for thee that bitter wine
Pressed in the dark from wo's black vine!

" I drained the cup that drowns with sleep,
And pillowed my head on the breast of Death:
He closed the lids that ceased to weep,
And kissed the lips at their latest breath!
That moment I had untimely birth
Out of the chrysalis of earth!
Then I saw that by the horrible deed
The chain was sundered, yet I was not freed;
I had burst away from a windowed cell
Into a dungeon unfathomable —
Into utter night — where I could only hear
The sighing of cold phantoms near!
I shrank with dread; but soon I knew
They also shrank with dread from me;
And presently I began to see
Thin shapes of such a ghastly hue
That sudden agues thrilled me through!

" Some bore in their hands, as sign of guilt,
Keen poinards crimson to the hilt,
Which, ever and anon, in wild despair
They struck into their breasts of air:
Some pressed to their pale lips empty vials
Till frenzied with their fruitless trials:
Some with their faces to the sky,
Walked ever searching for a beam:
Some leaped from shadowy turrets high,
And fell, as in a nightmare dream,
Halfway, and stopped, as some mad rill,
That leaps from the top of an alpine hill,
Ere it reaches the rocks it hoped to win,
Is borne away in a vapour thin:
Some plunged them into counterfeit pools —
Into water that neither drowns nor cools
The horrible fever that burns the brain,
Then climbed despairing to plunge again:
And there were lovers together clasped,
O'er fumeless brazures, who sighed and gasped,
Staring wonder in each other's eye,
And tantalized that they did not die.

" Then as I passed, with marvelling stare
They gazed, forgetting their own despair.
Oh, horrible! their eyes did gloat
Upon me, till at my ashen throat
I felt the fiery viper thirst
Which ever in that dry air is nurst.
And ere I was aware
I had raised the cup it was mine to bear:
My pale lips cleaved to the goblet dim,
And found but dust on the heated rim;
And then I knew — oh, misery! —
It was the same I had pledged to thee —
To absent thee, and to present Death,
Pledged and drained at one long-drawn breath —
Drained to the dregs! Then a hot wind sighed
Close in my ear — " Thou SUICIDE ! "
And those two words flew
Into my heart, and pierced it through;
And my eyes grew blind with pain
As a serpent which, with rage insane,
Strikes himself with venomed fangs,
And writhes in the dust with self-dealt 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 enthroned is.
But be thou ever wary and wise,
Gazing with unsleeping eyes,
And thou, perchance, shalt find ere long
Some spirit, racked with sin or wrong,
A-weary of Life's daily goad
And sinking under her lusty 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;
Don thou that heated armour then,
And strive with the striving world again"
And through long struggling it may be,
Thou mayst regain thy liberty!"

" Thus spake the spirit. Then it seemed
A sudden light within me beamed;
And I arose and earthward sped
With a cautious, noiseless tread,
Hearkening ever for that voice
To make my phantom heart rejoice.

" Through fields of twilight first I passed,
Then through a sunset — till at last
I heard the roar
Of ocean jargoning with the shore, —
The sea-like voice of Humanity,
And the tongue-like shouting of the sea!
Then as the night's wide track
Under my feet rolled dim and black,
I heard the voice which summoned me,
" Ida!" it cried, and I came to thee! "