Thou’st made for me an atmosphere of life;
The very air is brighter from thine eyes,
They are so soft and beautiful, and rife
With all we can imagine of the skies.
O woman, where is they resistless power;
I swore the livery of Heaven to grace,
Yet stand, to-day, a sacrilegious tower,
Perjured by the witchery of thy face.
Sanson.
TO SANSON
Then, love, I’ll give thee back thy perjured
vow;
I would not hold thee with one pleading
breath;
It may be best to leave the pathway now,
That can but lead to death.
I’ll crush the agonies that burning swell,
And
say farewell.
REVENITA.
TO REVENITA
“Farewell?” No, not farewell, I’ll
worship ever
Thy
form divine.
No death’s despair, no voice of doom shall sever
My
heart from thine.
Thou’st crowned me with they love and bade me
wear it,
I
kiss the shrine.
I will not give thee up, nay, here I swear it,
That
thou art mine.
* * * * *
* * * * *
A desecrated holiness is o’er me,
I’ve
held the Thyrsus cup;
I’ve dared the thunderbolts of Heaven for thee,
I
will not give up.
Sanson.
World, farewell!
And thou pale tape light, by whose fast-dying flame
I write
these words—the last my hand shall pen—farewell!
What is’t to die? To be shut in a dungeon’s
walls and starved to death? She knows, and soon
will I. She sought to learn of me, and I to teach
to her, the mystery of life. Ha, ha! Who
claimed her by the church’s law has given us
both to learn the mystery of death. What was’t
I loved? The eyes that thrilled me through and
through with their magnetic subtlety? They’re
there, set on my face; but where’s their lifened
light? What was’t I loved? The mouth
whose coral redness I have buried in my own?
’Tis there, shrunk ’gainst two rows of
dead pale pearls, and cold and colorless as lip of
statue carved of marble. Was it the form whose
perfect outline stamped it with divinity? It’s
there, but ’reft of all its winsome roundness,
and stiffening in the chill of death. It makes
me cold to look upon its rigidness. But just this
hour the breath went out; was’t that I loved?
’Twas this I clasped and kissed. What is
it that we’ve christened love, that glamours
men to madness, and stains with falsehood virgin purity?
It made this grewsome charnel vault a part of Heaven—the
graves there of those murdered knaves made rests of
roses for our heads; it made him spring the bolt and
lock us in. Where is the creed’s foundation?
I’ve shrived a thousand souls—I cannot
now absolve my own. To quench this awful thirst,