THE CORSAIR’S VICTIM.
(AN EXTRACT FROM “ZILLAH.”)
———
BY WM. H. C. HOSMER.
———
When Night, upon her starry throne,
Held undisputed sway and lone,
And moonlight to the trembling wave
A soft but spectral radiance gave,
He seized, with iron grasp, his chain,
As if endued with giant strength,
And after many efforts vain,
While glowing madness fired his brain,
From bondage burst at length.
The cunning Corsair heard the sound
Of strong link breaking, with a clang,
And stealing lightly, with one bound,
Upon his frenzied victim sprang:
His right arm, used to felon deed,
The Corsair raised with ready skill—
One thrust of his stiletto freed
The crazed one from his load of ill.
The pleading look and wild appeal
Of Zillah could not stay the steel;
She saw him fall, and from his side
The red stream gush in bubbling tide,
Then fell herself, as if the blade
A sheath of her own breast had made;
While fearfully his spouting gore
The white robe reddened that she wore.
Her ear heard not the gurgling sound
Of hungry waters closing round,
As hastily the ruffian cast
His victim to the ocean vast,
Or marked the grim, exulting smile
That lighted up his face the while:
Extended on the deck she lay,
As if the war of life was over,
As if her soul had fled away
To realms of never-ending day,
To join the spirit of her lover.
She woke at last from her long swoon,
To hope that Death would triumph soon,
And the mad pulses of her frame,
With icy touch, forever tame:
She woke with features ashy white,
And wildly gazed upon the plank
That deeply, freely in the night
The crimson of his veins had drank:
Then raising heavenward her eye,
In still, expecting posture stood,
As if a troop from realms on high
Were coming down, with battle-songs,
To wash out sternly in the blood
Of coward-hearts her many wrongs:
No tear-drop came to her relief
In that wild, parching hour of grief,
The tender plant of love she knew
Would into verdure break no more—
The spot was arid where it grew
In green luxuriance before.
She knew henceforth her lot below
Would be to quaff the cup of pain—
On thing of Earth she could not throw
The sunlight of her smile again:
The voice was still whose melting tone
Had vied in sweetness with her own—
The hiding wave had closed above
The only object of her love:
And Rispah, as strict watch she kept,
While cold, like forms of Parian stone,
Her sons on gory couches slept,
Felt not more desolate and lone.
In many hearts the gloomy sway
Of sorrow lessens, day by day,
Until the charms of life at last
Blot out remembrance of the past:
As winds may kiss the trampled flower,
And lift again its bruiséd leaf,
So time, with his assuaging power,
May stay the wasting march of grief:
But hearts in other bosoms beat
Where anguish finds a lasting seat—
That heal not with the lapse of time—
Too delicately stung for earth,
Whose chords can never after chime
With peals of loud, unmeaning mirth.
Weeks flew: but Zillah in their flight
Strove oft, but vainly, to forget
The horrors of that fatal night,
When her beloved star, whose light
Made bondage pleasant, set.
No murmur from the lip outbroke,
Though suddenly her cheek grew thin—
No quick, convulsive start bespoke
The desolating fire within.
Her dark eye rested on the wave
By day and in the hush of eve,
As if, ere long, the wet sea-cave
Her buried one would leave,
And, drifting suddenly to view,
His murderer with dread subdue.
Ah! I have said the stately mien
Of Zillah would befit a queen,
That lawless crime could ill withstand
Her innate bearing of command.
Alas! regality of soul
Gives agony supreme control,
And prompts the wretched one to hide
Consuming pangs from vulgar gaze—
To nurse, in uncomplaining pride,
The scorpion that preys.