Classic Poem

She stood upon a towering rock
With wide and frantic gaze;
No glimmer through the darkness broke,
To scare her, with its rays:
All, all was dismal solitude,
Above, below, around,
Except the sea's commotion rude,
That echoed doleful sound.

No friend was near that lonely spot,—
No barque passed o'er the wave,—
No bird attuned its mellow note,—
No sigh the zephyrs gave:
The wildest storm that raged there,
Was in a fevered brain;
The pulse that swelled a bosom fair—
The only beating strain.

She gazed, and as she gazed, she thought
On days of former bliss,
Ere pain had in her bosom wrought
Its work of wickedness;
But she had loved too fond since then,
With heart, and soul, and mind,
And he had proved the worst of men,
Who gave his vow most kind.

She felt the sadness of her state—
Her brightest hopes decay,
And spurned a vile Deceiver's hate
More than the angry spray.
The world had grown a wilderness
Of trouble, guile, and grief;
Death could alone end her distress,
And give her soul relief.

These maddening thoughts passed as a shock
Electric through her mind;
She stamped upon the rugged rock,
And cast her eyes behind:—
She leaped from off its summit high
Into the foaming wave—
Her soul is in eternity!
The billow is her grave.