Marcian Colonna An Italian Tale with Three Dramatic Scenes and Other Poems: By Barry Cornwall [i.e. Bryan Waller Procter] |
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 | Marcian Colonna |  |
50
XII.
“Clearer and clearer now from day to dayThe figures floated on my sight, but when
I moved they vanished. Then, a grim array,
Like spectres from the graves of buried men,
Came by in silence: each upon his face
Wore a wild look, as tho' some sad disgrace
Had stamped his life (or thus I thought) with sorrow.
They vanished too; but ever on the morrow
They came again, in greater sadness, 'till
I spoke; then one of them gave answer—shrill
As blasts that whistle thro' the dungeon's grate
On bleak December nights, when in her state
Comes the white Winter. ‘Look!’—(I thus translate
The sounds it uttered)—‘Look,’ the phantom said,
‘Upon thine ancestry departed—dead.
‘Each one thou seest hath left his gaping tomb
‘Empty, and comes to warn thee of thy doom:
‘And each, whilst living, bore within his brain
‘A settled madness: start not—so dost thou:
‘Thou art our own, and on thy moody brow
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‘Look on us all: we died as thou shalt die,
‘The victims of our heart's insanity.
‘From sire to son the boiling rivers ran
‘Thro' every vein, and 'twas alike with all:
‘It touched the child and trampled down the man;
‘And every eye that, with its dead dull ball,
‘Seems as it stared upon thee now, was bright
‘As thine is, with the true transmitted light.
‘Madness and pain of heart shall break thy rest,
‘And she shall perish whom thou lovest the best.
‘Once thou hast been a mockery unto men,
‘But thus, at least, it shall not be again.
‘Behold—where yon red rolling star doth shine
‘From out the darkness: that fierce star is thine,
‘Thy Destiny, thy Spirit, and its power
‘Shall guard and rule thee to thy latest hour;
‘And never shall it quit thy side, but be
‘Invisible to all and dim to thee,
‘Save when the fever of thy soul shall rise,
‘And then that light shall flash before thine eyes,
‘And thou shalt then remember that thy fate
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The spectre's hollow words; but while it spoke,
Its pale lip never moved, nor did its eye
Betray intelligence. With sweeping state,
Over the ground the train then glided by,
And vanish'd—vanish'd. Then methought I 'woke.”
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