Reason returns again, but ever gone
Are hope and happiness,—withered the bloom,
The last flower plucked, but still the stalk lives on,
A living death; the lone sepulchral tomb
Less hopeless is.—Thus fell the blasting doom
Upon Irene. Rayless the gathering night
Which settled o’er her soul engulfed in gloom:
She turned away like one whose vacant sight
All things can dimly see, yet naught can see aright.
XXIII.
Full well she knew the hand that dealt her doom
Lay there outstretched in pleading helplessness;
Should she withhold the potion, death would come
Outreaching time, dark thoughts; but who could guess
If e’er they broke upon her soul’s distress?
The night was long, but longer still even then
The night that wrapped her life. Deep shades depress
Her very thoughts in sighs. Nor tongue, nor pen,
Alas! hath Grief to tell that tale of woe again.
XXIV.
Long, long the night; its hours crept slowly by,
Each burdened by the weary weight of years;—
The soldier slept, but o’er the closing eye
Of mortal life fell that deep gloom which wears
The mask of death in Life’s dim vale of tears:
He slept; but ere the Dawn in mantle gray,
Who in the east her purple dome uprears
Each morn, had brought to man another day,
Cold in the embrace of death the soldier slept for aye.
XXV.
All through the long, long night Irene alone
Her vigil kept, and oft she strove in vain,
Ere the slow-ebbing tide of life had gone,
With gentle touch to chase away dull Pain
Which o’er the soldier’s brow his heavy chain
Had thrown. But, oh! it seemed as though
The weight of three-score years of Sorrow’s reign
Had fallen upon her life;—that night of woe,
Had turned her raven hair white as the wintry snow!