 | The poems posthumous and collected of Thomas Lovell Beddoes |  |
VIII. Reception of Evil Tidings.
What's this? Did you not see a white convulsion
Run through his cheek and fling his eye-lids up?
There's mischief in the paper.
Run through his cheek and fling his eye-lids up?
There's mischief in the paper.
Mark again
How, with that open palm, he shades his brain
From its broad, sudden meaning. Once I saw
One who had dug for treasure in a corner,
Where he, by torchlight, saw a trembling man
Burying a chest at night. Just so he stood
With open striving lips and shaking hair;
Alive but in his eyes, and they were fixed
On a smeared, earthly, bleeding corpse—his sister,
There by her murderer crushed into the earth.
How, with that open palm, he shades his brain
From its broad, sudden meaning. Once I saw
One who had dug for treasure in a corner,
Where he, by torchlight, saw a trembling man
Burying a chest at night. Just so he stood
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Alive but in his eyes, and they were fixed
On a smeared, earthly, bleeding corpse—his sister,
There by her murderer crushed into the earth.
| The poems posthumous and collected of Thomas Lovell Beddoes | |