The poetical works of Barry Cornwall [pseud.] Volume 2 - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1822 Excerpt: ...shot: he sighed but did not speak. Keeping a horrid silence there he sate, A maniac, full of love, and death, and fate: Again--the star that once his eye shone o'er Flash'd forth again more fiercely than before: And thro' his veins the current fever flew Like lightning, withering all it trembled through. He clenched his hands and rushed away, away, And looked and laughed upon the opening day, And mocked the morn with shouts, and wandered wild For hours as by some meteor thing beguiled. He wandered through the forests sad and lone, His heart all fiery and his senses gone; Till, at the last, (for nature sank at last,) The tempest of the fever fell and past, And he lay down upon the rocks to sleep, And shrunk into a troubled slumber, deep. Long was that sleep--long--very long and strange, And frenzy suffered then a silent change, And his heart hardened as the fire withdrew, Like furnaced iron beneath the Winters dew. XVI. He gained--he gained (why droops my story?) then An opiate deadly from the convent men, And bore it to his cave: she drank that draught Of death, and he looked on in scorn, and laughed, With an exulting terrible joy, when she Lay down in tears to slumber, silently.--She had no after-sleep; but ere she slept Strong spasms and pains throughout her body crept, And round her brain and tow'rds her heart, until They touched that seat of love,--and all was still. Away he wandered for some lengthened hour When the black poison shewed its fiercest power, And when he sought the cavern, there she lay, The young, the gentle,--dying fast away. He sate and watched her, as a nurse might do, And saw the dull film steal across the blue, And saw, and felt her sweet forgiving smile, That, as she died, parted her lips the while: Her hand?--its pulse was silent--...