THE FATAL BOON.
PART II.
GERALDINE.
PART II.
’Twas day! and all was bright and fair!—
Tis night!—and thunders rend the air;—
The lightning’s blaze illumes the shore;—
In driving hail, the torrents pour.
Oh! ’tis a night, whose dreadful shade
Seem’d but for hell’s dark demons made,
And Fancy’s eye might, in the storm,
Trace many a wild mysterious form.
Upon an heath, unmov’d by all,
That human nature can appal,10
Dark Dira stood!—and, by her side,
Buoy’d up by vengeful woman’s pride,
Like some fair angel’s slender form,
Near the dire demon of the storm,
The lightning’s blaze, with lurid glare,
Shew’d Geraldine pale, standing there.
And can no fear, can no remorse,
Stop, stop thee, from thy dreadful course?—
Oh! think, in what a gulph of crime,
Thou sink’st thy soul to endless time!20
Oh, think! oh, pause! oh, haste to fly
From such a gulph of misery!
On every feature of her face,
Nought but one fix’d resolve you’d trace,
And vain, alas! is human skill,
When woman once is bent on ill.
This wither’d heath, the fiends are wont,
With annual festival, to haunt;
And quaff, from many a murderer’s skull,
Bowls with blood-streams bubbling full!30
And where has been their blasting tread,
There never shrub can lift its head—
There never fall the dews of night—
There never beams the solar light!
On Dira’s magic-shielded head
Burst, with fierce blaze, the lightnings red;
But, ere they singed one hair, they fell,
And own’d the power of her spell.
Convuls’d her looks,—her eye-balls glare,—
Her elfin locks stream to the air,—40
Arms, neck, and breast expos’d and bare,
As if the wild wind’s rage to dare.
While nature trembled at the sin,
They now th’ infernal rites begin.
Within her lean and bony hand,
Dark Dira held a mystic wand;
Thrice, with that wand, she struck the ground,
And mutter’d many a mystic sound:
Then turning to the paly fair,
Who shudder’d, half-repentant, there,50
Full on her cold and trembling hand,
She struck the hell-devoted wand;
And, strange to say, one drop of blood
(As if to mar its whiteness) stood
On that fair hand, then downwards bore,
And fell, and was perceived no more;
But where it dropp’d, there instant came,
From the seer earth, a dark-blue flame;—
When on that flame the sorceress glanc’d,
Round, and round, and round she danc’d,60
With action wild, and gesture dread,
This rhime uncouth she sung or said:—
“Mighty child of darkness, hear!
“Queen of the sable sons of hell,
“Hecate, now incline thy ear,
“Listen to thy Dira’s spell!
“And ye dark train,
“That sport at midnight o’er th’ infernal plain,
“To my charms, now witness bear,
“Charms to all your vot’ries dear.70
“Lo! into these flames I fling
“Basilisk’s eye, and scorpion’s sting,
“And the bat’s wing!
“Fire, subservient to my will,
“Burn fiercer, hotter, faster still!
“To aid my charm,
“Lo! in thy flames, I cast a murderer’s arm.