II.
There was a gleam of jewels in the tent
Which one dim cresset lit—a baleful gleam—
And from his scattered armour seemed to stream
A dusky, evil light that came and went.
But from her eyes, as over him she bent,
Watching the surface of his drunken dream,
There shot a deadlier ray, a darker beam,
A look in which her life’s one lust found vent.
There was a hissing through her tightened teeth,
As with her scimitar she crouched above
His dark, doomed head, and held her perilous breath,
While ever and anon she saw him move
His red lascivious lips, and smile beneath
His curled and scented beard, and mutter love.
STRANGLED.
There is a legend in some Spanish book
About a noisy reveller who, at night,
Returning home with others, saw a light
Shine from a window, and climbed up to look,
And saw within the room, hanged to a hook,
His own self-strangled self, grim, rigid, white,
And who, struck sober by that livid sight,
Feasting his eyes, in tongue-tied horror shook.
Has any man a fancy to peep in
And see, as through a window, in the Past,
His nobler self, self-choked with coils of sin,
Or sloth or folly? Round the throat whipped fast
The nooses give the face a stiffened grin.
’Tis but thyself. Look well. Why be aghast?