The safety of the unexpected leap is told us just one instant too soon. There is an indescribable pleasure derived by the mind in being held in suspense in the contemplation of one passing through imminent perils, and that suspense cannot be broken, though it were but for the short time that one takes to pass from one side of the page to the other, without loss of power in the description, and of interest to the reader.
But the lady! will she attempt to follow? Did she not mark his hair-breadth escape? The confusion of thought in the mind of the count caused by his own peril, the sudden, unlooked-for leap, the fear lest his wife should try to follow ere he can turn to warn her of the danger, the dumb horror which seizes him as he sees her horse in the air leaping to his certain death; are told in a few rapid lines, and then follows the thrilling tableau:
"Forward they leaped! They leaped—a colored flash
Of life and beauty. Hark! A sudden crash—
Blent with that dreadful sound, a man's sharp cry—
Prone—'neath the crumbling bank—the horse and lady lie!"
Like a madman he rushes to her relief, clambering "as some wild ape" from branch to branch, trampling the lithe saplings under foot with giant tread. His love, his fear, his trembling excitement are told in one line:
"The strength is in his heart of twenty lives."
What a depth of meaning there is in that one sentence, and how happy the choice of words. When, in reading, we came upon the word heart where we expected to find "arm" or "frame," or some similar term which would express the increase of muscular and nervous power consequent upon strong mental emotion, we confess to having been startled by its originality, and we admire the line as it stands as a master stroke of true poetic genius.
Claud is so shocked at finding his beautiful and passionately loved wife apparently dead that he is struck deaf and dumb with grief. The noise of the passing hunt, the baying of the hounds, the cheery calls of the huntsmen, and shouts of the merry guests he neither hears nor heeds. It is some time ere he realizes the terrible accident. At last the thoughts shape themselves in his disordered brain, and, with one wild glance at her prostrate form, be catches her in his arms, and
"Parts the masses of her golden hair,
He lifts her, helpless, with a shuddering care,
He looks into her face with awe-struck eyes:
She dies—the darling of his soul—she dies!"
Then follows one of those passages marked by that deep pathos for which this poem is so remarkable: