University of Virginia Library

SCENE XI.
THE BRIDAL.

I.

II.

A lovely treacherous bower beheld,
With gilded scales, a serpent lurk,
While livid infamy, conceal'd,
Rejoic'd, prophetic of her work.
He hath not wound her in his coil;
The rose may still its fragrance shed;
Crime hath not sear'd the cheerful soil,
And the lily need not hang its head.

III.

But not again may she tempt its shade,
Till the vow is plighted, the blessing said,
That, like the holy man of old,
As chroniclers inspired have told,

The Maltese say that the Apostle Paul banished all venomous reptiles from the island when he shook off the serpent. Brydone.

From the fair isle of love and bliss
Charm all the venom'd things that hiss,
And rob the serpent of his sting,
At virtue's shrine meet offering.

IV.

Sick in his couch Rugero lay,
The leech foretells his final day
Fast hurrying to its close;
He bids them tie the knot of fate,
That calm, well pleas'd, he may await
His last and long repose.
The hour drew near: “O come, my bride;”
Thus spoke the Baron bold—
“Why wait the dull delays of pride,
A monster stern and cold?
No pomp shall mar the mystic rite,
Love spreads his rosy pinions light,
The gorgeous pageant flies!”—
Rugero rais'd his failing hands,
The Knight implores, and he commands,
And her last struggle dies.

V.

O many a winding stair doth lead
To that chapel where they shall be wed.
The lady to her lover clung,
For damps and glooms around them hung;
Torches threw round a dusky glare,
But no living soul was there.
Of solid rock was hewn each step,
In days to song unknown;
Their records all in mystery sleep,
And their memorial gone.
But on the arching walls were trac'd
Strange characters,

Chaldean inscriptions are constantly found in Sicily. See a former note.

yet uneffac'd,
And symbol wild, that all the lore
Of clerks all vainly might explore.

VI.

O countless are the steps they tread
Ere the chapel is gain'd where the rites shall be said.
Trembled each taper in the gale
The hidden realms unwont inhale;
But trembled more the bride, for whom
They flar'd amid the shadowy gloom.
“What fears my gentle bride?”
“O weary is this dark descent,
And I with toil am worn and spent—
Watching life's pale and waning lamp
And death-dews gathering cold and damp,
By a sick father's side.”

VII.

When shall the winding rock-hewn stair,
How distant now from upper air!
When shall it find an end?
The lady paus'd—“why stays my love.?”
“Vaumond, no farther will I move,
No more will I descend.”
“Now, Isabel, my own thou art,
Here will I claim thee, better part,
Of every life-throb of my heart!
Here at the solemn tide of eve,
And in night's central realm,
Our deathless destinies we weave,
And all disunion whelm—
One upon earth, till earth is gone,
In heav'n or hell, we will be ONE!”

VIII.

“Hah! where the priest? the altar where”
“The priest and altar both are near”—
Then heaving on its hinges hoarse,
The portal op'd, by unseen force;
Broad and deep the chapel show'd,
Where granite columns darkly stood;
The marvel, since the days of eld
What power each giant mass upheld.
All rudely character'd, the dome
Conceal'd their capitals in gloom
Of stones immense, the floor far spread
Gave hollow echo to their tread;
But other sound was none to chase
The awful silence of the place.
Far, in the darksome distance gleaming,
A many-colour'd light was streaming—
There should the altar be—
There should a Saviour's love divine
Be present in his mystic sign;
But the lady's soul within her sunk,
And all unknowing why, she shrunk,
As she look'd on the pageantry.

IX.

Is that a cross, the pillar bears?
Not now, as wont, its form it rears,
Recording agonies, that won
Redemption by the incarnate Son.—
—If cross it be, the sacred sign
Is prostrate; flames around it twine;
And, blasphemous, the sculptor's care
Made wreathing flames ascending there.
Is that the font; where believers prest
To dip their hands in waters blest,
And bear their sign of pride?
Deceit perchance of the shadowy place,
Boiling it seem'd in its black vase—
Perchance the distant light belies
Its crystal wave and purer dies,
But blood-red was the tide.
As wont, the lady stretch'd her hand
Towards the living fountain bland,
And quick her arm the baron stay'd
Not till it mov'd where that water play'd—
Not till a fierce and mad'ning flame
Shot thro' her heart and fir'd her frame—
Pierc'd thro' the brain and bursting head,
Intense and brief, it came and fled.

X.

“O come, my bride—the priest awaits—
Come, let us link our deathless fates”—
“Vaumond! Vaumond! in such abode,
Never did Christian worship God!
There is a whirl within my brain,
Bear me to upper air again!”
“O 'tis a maiden's blushing fears,
Mine antique chapel stern appears:
O let them not thy true love blight,
For so his troth should warrior plight.”

XI.

The lady in her terrors lost,
The mighty nave scarce conscious crost;
And, e'er her steps the chancel won,
All sight, all sound distinct, were gone,
For a mingling glare bedimm'd her eye,
That seem'd to mock at every die,
That tints the bow which spans the sky.
Seem'd it many a twisted snake
Breath'd forth each one a varying flake,
That wildly lit the kindling wall,
Where light intense outshone them all;
Where no embodied soul may gaze
On the uncouth symbols of the blaze—
It was so fierce and deep to see,
So livid was its brilliancy!
Beneath the serpent's foul embrace,
Was the hideous altar of the place;
And seem'd, that from the Isle of Bones
Were dug its grisly stepping-stones—

The island of Ustica, where several thousand Carthaginians are said to have perished by famine.

Upon the shrine she might not look,
But on it lay an open book—
While blacker fast, the sleepy spell,
In gathering shadows, round her fell,
A fearful thought flash'd on her soul,
That of dead men's skins was form'd the scroll,
And its letters bright were writ with fire
That was, and is, and never shall expire!

XII.

Erect her head that 'gan to droop,
Her silken eyelash slow rais'd up—
When a tall figure dark she view'd
Before the fearful altar rude;
The broad leaves of the volume spread
Before the priest conceal'd his bead.
But as the air his cowl way'd by,
The lady look'd on his flashing eye—
She look'd, and shuddering sunk once more,
Where her shivering frame the Baron bore:
She heard the monk's low mutter'd tone,
But word distinct yet mark'd she none;
Till sharp and quick he fiercely spoke—
“Art thou HIS, now and ever,
That when the bonds of life are broke,
The soul death shall not sever?”
—Then, as his dismal tones he breath'd,
Was a twisted ring around them swath'd;
The pale blue lights about them danc'd,
Burst one wild shriek from Isabel—
Deep came upon her soul the trance,
And while, before her falling glance,
The mists collecting fell,
Was heard afar a rumbling sound,
As if thousand chariots shook the ground;
She saw the streaming lightning flash,
She heard the unholy altar crash—
And, as the radiance pour'd along,
Faded the pale lights' charnel throng—
The blasted serpents wither'd lay,
With the blaze, the fiend priest pass'd away.
Again, again the avenging flame
Lit those foul walls of sin and shame—
She saw the massy columns move,
As when the whirlwind shakes the grove—
The granite masses bow and shake;—
Then clos'd her eyes, as if no more to wake.

XIII.

'Twas in the greenwood shade they woke,
Where first her orb's dark lustre broke
Upon the tide of day;
Two stranger serfs support her now,
Lave her pale cheek and icy brow,
And watch, the dark-fring'd lid below,
The slow-returning ray.
All brightly, through the quivering shade,
The golden shafts of morning play'd—
“Where am I?”—seated they the maid
Upon a moss-clad rock;
Winding his cloak his form around,
And bent his gaze upon the ground,
The younger stranger spoke.

XIV.

“Lady, chance here our footsteps bore,
Last eve, when woke the earthquake's roar;
Earth yawn'd beneath us; terror led,
Then down the cleft we darkling sped.
The lightning's momentary glow
Illum'd the giant-vault below,
Discovering thy senseless form—
Fearful, but transient, was the storm;
And, when ascending, we survey'd
Yon castle's towers in ruin laid”—
“Ha! then my father, perish'd he?”
—Now on the air a sound arose,
'Twas chaunted slow and solemnly,
Prolong'd and mournful was its close.
And mark'd they on the hill's wild side,
Where late had frown'd the castle's pride,
Slow winding down, a train
Of holy monks, who strove to save,
In that dread hour the only brave:
And now it was, the fathers said
The passing requiem for the dead,
When earthly hope was vain.
Midway a sable bier was borne,
And the mild breeze of early morn
Wafted the solemn strain.

XV.
Requiescat in Pace.

XVI.

Her fears confirm'd, the lady then
Had sunk into her trance agen;
The STRANGER'S tones recall'd her sense,
For such were those she once had lov'd;
That love was pure as 'twas intense—
Whither, ah! whither had it rov'd?
Their memory was, like the well-known air
His native mountain-echoes bear,
That the stranger hears in a distant clime,
Whom the hurrying flight of fate and time,
And the weary waste of waters part
From the land where still abides his heart,
She wept; and O! those tears were sweet
They were the first her cheek that wet,
Since at the baleful banquet, she
Had pledg'd the Baron's victory.

XVII.

And who will weep for Isabel?
The untun'd throbs of a heart of flame,
The wild mirth of the demon yell,
Are these her only requiem?
O, as the stranger bore her on,
How fair in her unfaithfulness!
Thus from her first, her true love won,
More lovely in her blighted grace—
He felt, that if his love had perish'd,
That once, e'en as his life he cherish'd,
That pity had more power to prove
Than all the wildest dreams of love.
Revenge! revenge! but not on her—
Revenge upon her murderer!
Whose poniard enter'd the pure mind,
And left a blighted wreck behind.

XVIII.

So whilom on the hero's son

Telemachus.

The warrior goddess rose confest;
All terribly her armour shone,
And frown'd the Gorgon on her breast—
But her blue eye its radiance shed,
And, while he gaz'd, his terrors fled.

XIX.

They led the lady, journeying light,
Where the convent's open gates invite;
They left her by her father's bier,
Wet with a daughter's holy tear.