"Fair damsel," said he (and he chuckled the while),
"This picture, I see, you admire;
Then take it, I beg you, perhaps 'twill beguile
Some moments of sorrow: (pray pardon my smile)
Or, at least, keep you home by the fire."
Then Ellen the gift, with delight and surprise,
From the cunning young stripling receiv'd.
But she knew not the poison that enter'd her eyes,
When beaming with rapture they gazed on her prize:
Yet thus was fair Ellen deceiv'd!
'Twas a youth o'er the form of a statue inclin'd;
And the sculptor he seem'd of the stone;
Yet he languish'd, as though for its beauty he pin'd,
And gaz'd, as the eyes of the statue so blind
Reflected the beams of his own.
'Twas the tale of the sculptor, Pygmalion of old;
Fair Ellen remember'd and sigh'd,
"Ah! could'st thou but lift from that marble so cold,
Thine eyes so enchanting, thy arms should enfold,
And press me this day as thy bride."
She said: when, behold, from the canvass arose
The youth ... and he stepp'd from the frame;
With a furious joy, his arms did enclose
The love-plighted Ellen; and, clasping, he froze
The blood of the maid with his flame!
She turn'd and beheld on each shoulder a wing
"Oh! heaven!" cried she, "who art thou?"
From the roof to the ground did his fierce answer ring,
When frowning, he thunder'd, "I am the Paint-King!
And mine, lovely maid, thou art now!"
Then high from the ground did the grim monster lift
The loud-screaming maid, like a blast;
And he sped through the air, like a meteor swift,
While the clouds, wand'ring by him, did fearfully drift
To the right and the left as he pass'd.
Now, suddenly sloping his hurricane flight,
With an eddying whirl he descends;
The air all below him becomes black as night,
And the ground where he treads, as if mov'd with affright,
Like the surge of the Caspian bends.
"I am here!" said the fiend, and he thundering knock'd
At the gates of a mountainous cave:
The gates open'd wide, as by magick unlock'd,
While the peaks of the mount, reeling to and fro, rock'd,
Like an island of ice on the wave.
"Oh! mercy!" cried Ellen, and swoon'd in his arms.
But the Paint-King, he scoff'd at her pain.
"Prithee, love," said the monster, "what mean these alarms?"
She hears not, she sees not the terrible charms
That wake her to horror again.