“With breathless speed, like a soul in chase,
I took him up and ran,There was no time to dig a grave
Before the day began : In a lonesome wood, with heaps of leaves,
I hid the murdered man ! “ And all that day I read in school,
But my thought was other where; As soon as the mid-day task was done,
In secret I was there : And a mighty wind had swept the leaves,
And still the corse was bare !
“ Then down I cast me on my face,
And first began to weep,
For I knew my secret then was one
That earth refused to keep:
Or land or sea, though he should be
Ten thousand fathoms deep.
“ So wills the fierce avenging Sprite,
Till blood for blood atones !
Ay, though he's buried in a cave,
And trodden down with stones,
And years have rotted off his flesh,
The world shall see his bones !
“ Oh God! that horrid, horrid dream
Besets me now awake!
Again-again, with dizzy brain,
The human life I take;
And my
red right hand grows raging hot, Like Cranmer's at the stake. “And still no peace for the restless clay,
Will wave or mould allow;
The horrid thing pursues my soul,-
It stands before me now !”
The fearful Boy looked up,
and Huge drops upon his brow!
That very night, while gentle sleep
The urchin eyelids kissed,
Two stern-faced men set out from Lynn,
Through the cold and heavy mist;
And Eugene Aram walked between
With gyves upon his wrist.
The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,
A banner, with the strange device,
Excelsior!
His brow was sad ; his eye beneath
Flashed like a falchion from its sheath,
And like a silver clarion rung
The accents of that unknown tongue,
Excelsior!
In happy homes he saw the light
Of household fires gleam warm and bright;
Above the spectral glaciers shone,
And from his lips escaped a groan,
Excelsior!
“ Try not the Pass !” the old man said, “ Dark lowers the tempest overhead, The roaring torrent is deep and wide!” And loud that clarion voice replied,
Excelsior!
“O stay,” the maiden said, “and rest
Thy weary head upon this breast !"
A tear stood in his bright blue eye,
But still he answered, with a sigh,
Excelsior!
“ Beware the pine-tree's withered branch !
Beware the awful avalanche !"
This was the peasant's last good-night!
A voice replied, far up the height,
Excelsior!
At break of day, as heavenward
The pious monks of Saint Bernard
Uttered the oft-repeated prayer,
A voice cried through the startled air,
Excelsior!
A traveller, by the faithful hound,
Half-buried, in the snow was found,
Still grasping in his hand of ice
That banner, with the strange device,
Excelsior!
There, in the twilight cold and gray,
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,
And from the sky, serene and far,
A voice fell, like a falling star,
Excelsior!
In the same hour the breath of life receiving,
They came together and were beautiful ;
But, as they slumbered in their mother's lap,
How mournful was their beauty! She would sit,
And look and weep, and look and weep again ;
For Nature had but half her work achieved,
Denying, like a step-dame, to the babes
Her noblest gifts ; denying speech to one,
And to the other reason.
But at length
(Seven years gone by, seven melancholy years)
Another came, as fair and fairer still ;
And then, how anxiously the mother watched
Till reason dawned and speech declared itself !
Reason and speech were his; and down she knelt,
Clasping her hands in silent ecstasy.
On the hill-side, where still their cottage stands,
('Tis near the upper falls in Lauterbrounn;
For there I sheltered now, their frugal hearth
Blazing with mountain-pine when I appeared,
And there, as round they sate, I heard their story.)
On the hill-side, among the cataracts,
In happy ignorance the children played ;
Alike unconscious, through their cloudless day,
Of what they had and had not; everywhere
Gathering rock-flowers; or, with their utmost might,
Loosening the fragment from the precipice,
And, as it tumbled, listening for the plunge;
Yet, as by instinct, at the 'customed hour
Returning; the two eldest, step by step,
Lifting along, and with the tenderest care,
Their infant brother.
Once the hour was past;
And, when she sought, she sought and could not find ;
And when she found - Where was the little one ?
Alas! they answered not; yet still she asked,
Still in her grief forgetting.
With a scream, Such as an eagle sends forth when he soars,— A scream that through the wild scatters dismay, The idiot boy looked up into the sky, And leaped and laughed aloud, and leaped again ; As if he wished to follow in its flight Something just gone, and gone from earth to heaven: While he, whose every gesture, every
look Went to the heart, for from the heart it came, He who nor spoke nor heard—all things to him, Day after day, as silent as the grave, (To him unknown the melody of birds, Of waters—and the voice that should have soothed His infant sorrows, singing him to sleep), Fled to her mantle as for refuge there, And, as at once o'ercome with fear and grief, Covered his head and wept. A dreadful thought Flashed through her brain. “Has not some bird of prey, Thirsting to dip his beak in innocent bloodIt must, it must be so !" And so it was.
There was an Eagle that had long acquired
Absolute sway, the lord of a domain
Savage, sublime ; nor from the hills alone
Gathering large tribute, but from every vale ;
Making the ewe, whene'er he deigned to stoop,.
Bleat for the lamb. Great was the recompense
Assured to him who laid the tyrant low;
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