House by the sea : a poem / Thomas Buchanan Read [electronic text]

VII.

INTO the care of a gray-haired crone, The sybil who tended his dull hearth-stone, He yielded the body. A couch was spread, And the lady was laid as she were not dead; And the dame from off the swooning face Smoothed the wet locks into their place; And Roland, when the salt sea-spray Which blurred his vision was cleared away, Holding a white torch, bent to trace The features of that sleeping face. His heart stood still! His blood ran chill! His wide eyes could not gaze their fill! And as his marvelling face was drawn Nearer and nearer to stare thereon—

Slowly—slowly as a veil Lifted from a phantom's visage pale, The lady's delicate lids were raised, And in Roland's face the soft orbs gazed With all that touching tenderness Which only loving eyes express.

He had clasped the ghost of his beloved, And not a tremor in his soul was moved,— From lips of air had taken the kiss With not a fear to mar the bliss,— And heard what the threatening demon said, With a pang of pain but not of dread!

But now an icy horror stole Through the deepest depths of his inmost soul; For here indeed was the risen dead For whom the funeral tears were shed! A spectre of dust!—a ghost of clay!— That lived when the spirit had passed away.

He trembled, but could not move or speak: He had gazed in those eyes till his will was weak.

Then the lady sighed, and her bosom heaved,And she faintly smiled as her heart was grieved; While the thought of pain which shadowed her brow Said, "Roland, ah! Roland, thou lovest me not now!" Then a great tear stole from under her lid, And rebukingly over her white cheek slid: Then Roland cried as he clasped her hand, "'Tis a dream that I cannot understand! Forgive me, dear Ida, if even I seem To wrong thy sweet shade in the dark of a dream!"

" Oh, joy! Thou hast called me 'dear Ida,'" she cried, And she lovingly drew him more close to her side. That voice—'twas the same he had heard in gone days, While she poured in his eyes as of old her soft gaze.

Then she sighed—"Ah! dear Roland, a vision it seems?— To me 'tis the sweetest of all waking dreams! And let me recount in this hour of bliss How I fled out of the past into this, Escaping from Death's black precipice."