SUPPOSED TO BE AN EPITHALAMIUM

OF FRANCIS RAVAILLAC AND
CHARLOTTE CORDAY

'Tis midnight now-athwart the murky
air,

Dank lurid meteors shoot a livid gleam;

From the dark storm-clouds flashes a fearful glare,

My form upborne by viewless aether rode, And spurned the lessening realms of earthly night.

What heavenly notes burst on my ravished ears,

What beauteous spirits met my dazzled eye!

Hark! louder swells the music of the spheres,

30

More clear the forms of speechless bliss float by,

And heavenly gestures suit aethereal melody.

But fairer than the spirits of the air, More graceful than the Sylph of symmetry,

It shows the bending oak, the roaring Than the enthusiast's fancied love

stream.

I pondered on the ceaseless rage of
Kings;

My rapt soul dwelt upon the ties that
bind

The mazy volume of commingling things,

When fell and wild misrule to man

stern sorrow brings.

I heard a yell-it was not the knell, 10
When the blasts on the wild lake sleep,
That floats on the pause of the summer
gale's swell,

O'er the breast of the waveless deep. I thought it had been death's accents cold

That bade me recline on the shore; 15 I laid mine hot head on the surge-beaten mould,

And thought to breathe no more.

But a heavenly sleep
That did suddenly steep

I love so well.'

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Hark! to those notes, how sweet, how
thrilling sweet
They echo to the sound of angels' feet.

Oh haste to the bower where roses are
spread,

And I will recline on thy marble neck
Till I mingle into thee;
And I will kiss the rose on thy cheek,
And thou shalt give kisses to me.
For here is no morn to flout our de-
light,

100

Oh! dost thou not joy at this?
And here we may lie an endless night,
A long, long night of bliss.'
Say what it is to love,
Spirits! when raptures move,

When passion's tear stands on the
cheek,
105
When bursts the unconscious sigh;
And the tremulous lips dare not speak
What is told by the soul-felt eye.
But what is sweeter to revenge's ear
66 ye] thou 1810.

For there is prepared thy nuptial bed.
Oh haste-hark! hark!-they're gone.

sleeps,

The rising tempest sung a funeral | Seeks murder and guilt when virtue
dirge,
And on the blast a frightful yell arose. Winged with the power of some ruthless
Wild flew the meteors o'er the maddened

main,

Wilder did grief athwart my bosom glare;

15 Stilled was the unearthly howling, and a strain,

Swelled mid the tumult of the battling air,

king,

And sweeps o'er the breast of the
prostrate plain.

It was not a fiend from the regions of
Hell

IO

That poured its low moan on the stillness of night:

It was not a ghost of the guilty dead,

'Twas like a spirit's song, but yet more Nor a yelling vampire reeking with

soft and fair.

Wilt thou our lowly beds with tears of pity lave?'

'Ah! no, I cannot shed the pitying tear, This breast is cold, this heart can feel no more;

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This voice is low, cold, hollow, and chill, 'Tis not heard by the ear, but is felt in the soul.

'Tis more frightful far than the deathdaemon's scream,

But I can rest me on thy chilling bier,
Can shriek in horror to the tempest's Or the laughter of fiends when they

roar.'

THE SPECTRAL
HORSEMAN

WHAT was the shriek that struck
Fancy's ear

As it sate on the ruins of time that is
past?

Hark! it floats on the fitful blast of the wind,

And breathes to the pale moon a

funeral sigh.

howl o'er the corpse

25 Of a man who has sold his soul to

Hell.

More pale his cheek than the snows of
Nithona,

When winter rides on the northern
blast,

It is the Benshie's moan on the storm, 5
Or a shivering fiend that thirsting for And howls in the midst of the leafless

Yet when the fierce swell of the tempest | On the blast that sweeps the breast of is raving, the lake, And the whirlwinds howl in the caves And mingles its swell with the moon