The mere skeleton of this story is palpitant with life; but in Miss Thomas’ cultivated and beautiful recital, wherein the well-rounded, suave pentameter falls never otherwise than richly on the ear, all the vibrant, thrilling, terrifying elements of the story have been refined away. When Genevra wakens in the tomb, and touches in the darkness the human skeletons about her, and struggles to free herself from the entangling cerements, and beats with superhuman strength at the gratings until they yield to her hand, and to the outer stone until it unseals at her terrified touch,—there are dramatic materials which even history has infused with red blood; but either Miss Thomas does not conceive the situation as having thrills and terrors, or has not been able to impart them to her record, for she sums the matter up in these two stanzas, illustrating, apparently, the Gentle Art of Being Buried Alive:
And now she dreams she lies in marble rest
Within the Amieri’s chapel-tomb,
With hands laid idly on an idle breast.
How sweetly can the carven lilies bloom,
As they would soften her untimely doom….
Nay, living flowers are these that brush her cheek!
She starts awake amid the nether gloom,
From out dead swoon returning faint and weak;
No voice hath she, but none might hear her, could she speak.