Meanwhile Emilius was again standing among the crowd: but on a sudden he was seized by that heart-burning, that shivering, which had already so often come over him in the midst of a multitude in a like state of excitement. It drove him out of the ballroom, out of the house, and along the desolate streets; nor did he recover and regain the quiet possession of his senses, till he reacht his lonely chamber. The night light was already burning; he sent his servant to bed: everything over the way was silent and dark, and he sat down to pour forth the feelings which the ball had aroused, in verse.
Within the heart 'tis still;
Sleep each wild thought encages:
Now stirs a wicked will,
Would see how madness rages,
And cries: Wild spirit awake!
Loud cymbals catch the cry,
And back its echoes shake;
And, shouting peals of laughter,
The trumpet rushes after,
And cries: Wild spirit awake!
Amid them flute-tones fly,
Like arrows, keen and numberless;
And with bloodhound yell
Pipes the onset swell;
And violins and violoncellos,
Creaking, clattering,
Shrieking, shattering;
And horns whence thunder bellows;
To leave the victim slumberless,
And drag forth prisoned madness,
And cruelly murder all quiet and innocent gladness.What will be the end of this commotion?
Where the shore to this turmoiling ocean?
What seeks the tossing throng,
As it wheels and whirls along?
On! on! the lustres
Like hellstars bicker:
Let us twine in closer clusters,
On! on! ever closer and quicker!
How the silly things throb, throb amain!
Hence all quiet!
Hither riot!
Peal more proudly,
Squeal more loudly,
Ye cymbals, ye trumpets! bedull all pain,
Till it laugh again.Thou beckonest to me, beauty's daughter;
Smiles ripple o'er thy lips,
And o'er thine eye's blue water;
O let me breathe on thee,
Ere parted hence we flee,
Ere aught that light eclipse!
I know that beauty's flowers soon wither:
Those lips, within whose rosy cells
Thy spirit warbles its sweet spells,
Death's clammy kiss ere long will press together.
I know, that face so fair and full
Is but a masquerading skull:
But hail to thee skull so fair and so fresh!
Why should I weep and whine and wail,
That what blooms now must soon grow pale,
And that worms must batten on that sweet flesh?
Let me laugh but today and tomorrow,
And what care I for sorrow,
While thus on the waves of the dance by
each other we sail?Now thou art mine,
And I am thine:
And what though pain and trouble wait
To seize thee at the gate,
And sob, and tear, and groan, and sigh,
Stand ranged in state
On thee to fly,
Blithely let us look and cheerily
On death that grins so drearily!
What would grief with us, or anguish?
They are foes that we know how to vanquish.
I press thine answering fingers,
Thy look upon me lingers,
Or the fringe of thy garment will waft me
a kiss:
Thou rollest on in light;
I fall back into night;
Even despair is bliss.From this delight,
From this wild revel's surge
Perchance there may emerge
Foul jealousy, and scorn, and envious spite.
But this is our glory and pride;
When thee I despise,
I turn but my eyes,
And the fair one beside thee will welcome
my gaze,
And she is my bride!
O happy, happy maze!
Or shall it be her neighbour?
Whose eyes, like a sabre,
Flash and pierce,
Their glance is so fierce.Thus jumping and prancing,
All together go dancing
Adown life's giddy cave;
Nor living, nor loving,
But dizzily roving
Through dreams to a grave.
There below 'tis yet worse:
Earth's flowers and its clay
Roof a gloomier day,
Hide a still deeper curse.
Ring then, ye cymbals, enliven this dream!
Ye horns shout a fiercer, more vulture-like scream!
And frisk caper skip prance dance yourselves
out of breath!
For your life is all art,
Love has given you no heart:
So hurrah till you plunge into bottomless
death.
He had ended, and was standing by the window. Then she came into the opposite chamber, lovely, as he had never yet seen her: her brown hair floated freely, and played in wanton ringlets about the whitest of necks; she was but lightly clad, and seemed as if she meant to finish some little household matters at this late hour of the night before she went to bed: for she placed two candles in two corners of the room, set the green cloth on the table to rights, and withdrew again.
Emilius was still sunk in his sweet dreams, and gazing on the image which his beloved had left in his mind, when to his horrour the frightful, the scarlet old woman walkt through the chamber: the gold on her head and breast glared ghastlily as it threw back the light.
She had vanisht again. Was he to believe his eyes? Was it not some delusive phantom of the night that his own feverish imagination had conjured up before him?
But no! she returned, still more hideous than before, with a long grey and black mane flying wildly and haggardly about her breast and back. The beauteous maiden followed her, pale, stiff; her lovely bosom was all bared, but her whole form was like a marble statue.
Betwixt them they led the sweet little child, crying and clinging imploringly to the fair maiden, who lookt not down upon it. The child lifted up and claspt its little beseeching hands, and stroakt the pale neck and cheeks of the marble beauty. But she held it fast by the hair, and in the other hand a silver basin.
Then the old woman growled, and pulled out a long knife, and drew it across the white neck of the child. Here something crawled forth from behind that they seemed not to perceive, or it must have struck them with the same thrilling terrour as Emilius. A serpent curled its loathsome neck, scale after scale, lengthening and still lengthening, out of the darkness, and stoopt down over the child, whose lifeless limbs hung from the old woman's arms: its black tongue lickt up the spirting red blood, and a green sparkling eye shot over into the eye, and brain, and heart of Emilius, who instantly dropt on the ground.
He was senseless when found by Roderick some hours after.