Pioneers and all, had tasted her sweet body,
So I had nothing known.”
Then the voice, still low and plaintive, swelled and quivered with the glorious words that followed:
“O, now, forever,
Farewell the tranquil mind! farewell content!
Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars,
That make ambition virtue! O, farewell!”
And as he ended with the line,
“Farewell! Othello’s occupation’s gone!”
his form and limbs drooping, his lips sunken and tremulous, his very life seemed going out with each word, as if everything had been taken from him and he was all gone. Suddenly, with one electrifying bound, he leaped the whole gamut from mortal exhaustion to gigantic rage, his eyeballs rolling and flashing and his muscles strung, seized the cowering Iago by the throat, and, with a startling transition of voice from mellow and mournfully lingering notes to crackling thunderbolts of articulation, shrieked,—