The Isle of Devils A Historical Tale, Funnded on an Anecdote in the Annals of Portugal. (From an unpublished Manuscript.) By M. G. Lewis |
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 | The Isle of Devils |  |
VII.
Days creep—months roll—no change—no hope—and oh!Rosalvo lost—what hope can life bestow?
Death—only Death, she feels can end her woes,
Nor doubts soon death will bring that wished-for close.
For now her mind, her frame, confess disease,
Painful and faint she moves; her tottering knees
Scarce bare her weight; and oft by humour moved,
Her sickening soul now loaths what late it loved.
It comes! the moment comes! her frame is rent
By sharper pangs; her nerves too strongly bent,
Seem on the point to break, her forehead burns,
Her curdling blood is fire—is ice—by turns;
Her heart-strings crack—this hour is sure her last,
Fainting she sinks, and hopes that hour is past.
Wake Irza, wake, to grief more strange and deep,
Still must thou live, and only live to weep;
Oh lift thine aching head, thy languid eyes,
And mark what hideous stranger near thee lies.
“Guard me all-blessed Saints!” a monster child
The rushes prest and as it grimly smiled;
Its shaggy limbs and eyes of sable fire,
Betrayed the crime and claimed its hellish sire.
“Lost! lost! my soul is lost!”—the affrighted maid,
(Ah! now a maid no more) distracted said,
And wrung her hands; those words she scarce could say,
And would have prayed, but feared 'twas sin to pray.
That only Veil which ne'er admits a stain,
The Veil of ignorance is rent in twain:
In spite of cloisters, virtue, horror, youth,
She knows and feels, and shudders at the truth.
That night accursed—in death like swoon she slept,
Then near her couch if that dark Dæmon crept,
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And did not Mary then protect her maid?
Deprived of sense—betrayed by place and time,
Then was she doomed to share the unconscious crime;
Debased, deflowered, and stampt a wretch for life,
A Monster's mother, and a Dæmon's wife.
Oh! at that thought, her soul what passions tear,
How then she beats her breast—how rends her hair;
And bids with golden ringlets scattered round,
Stream all the air, and glitter all the ground!
Sighs, sobs, and shrieks, the place of words supply,
And still she mourns to live, and prays to die;
Till heart denies to groan, and eyes to flow:
Then on her bed of rushes sinking low,
Languid and lost she lies, in silent, senseles woe.
What lifts her burning head? What opes her eye?
What makes her blood run back?—a faint shrill cry;
Too well alas, that cry was understood,
The Monster pined for want, and claimed its food.
Then in her heart what rival passions strove!
How shrank disgust! how yearned maternal love!
Now to its life her feelings she prefers,
Now nature wakes and makes her own—“'tis hers.”
Loathing its sight she melts to hear its cries,
And while she yields the breast, averts her eyes.
Not so the Dæmon sire, the child he raised,
He danced it, kissed it, nursed it, knelt and gazed,
Till joyful tears gushed forth, and dimmed his sight;
Not Irza's self was viewed with more delight.
He held it towards her; horror seemed to thrill
Her frame—he sighed, and clasped it closer still;
Once, and but once, his features wrath expressed,
He saw her shudder as it drained her breast:
And while reproach half mingled with his moan,
Snatched it from her's, and pressed it his own.
| The Isle of Devils | |