THE FRATRICIDE’S DEATH.
A RHAPSODY.
The following effort of a wild and maddened imagination, rioting in its own unreal world, is by the ‘American Opium-Eater,’ whose remarkable history was given in the Knickerbocker for July, 1842. The MS. is stained in several places with the powerful drug, to the abuse of which the writer was so irresistibly addicted. The subjoined remarks precede the poem: ‘This extravaganza is worthy of preservation only as ‘a psychological curiosity,’ like Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan,’ which was composed under similar circumstances; if that indeed can be called composition, in which all the images rose up before the writer as THINGS, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awaking, he appeared to have a distinct recollection of the whole: taking his pen, ink and paper, he instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. The state of corporeal sleep but intellectual activity, during the continuance of which the phenomenon above described occurred, was caused by a very large dose of opium, and came upon me while reading the ‘Confession of a Fratricide,’ published by the priest who attended him in his last moments. I should warn the reader that the fratricide, like the author, could not be said to possess the ‘mens sana in corpore sano,’ both having been deranged.’
Ed. Knickerbocker.
The universe shook as the monarch passed
On the way to his northern throne;
His robe of snow around him he cast,
He rode on the wings of the roaring blast,
And beneath him dark clouds were blown.