The bridal of Vaumond :: :: University of Virginia Library

A hollow roar of mirth all strange
In distant echoes died,
And Lodowick was left to range
The solitudes untried.
And seem'd it that in chaos then
Were whelm'd the warrior's soul and brain—
Nor doubt—nor fear—nor hope remain.
If from his dream he ever wake
And blest communion e'er partake
Of fellow-man—again, if e'er
His tones are breath'd, where such may hear,
Where cheerful day's glad fountain glows,
What secrets can the knight disclose!
—He wander'd on—to stupor wrought,
The excommunicate of thought—
As seeing, hearing, feeling, nought;
A glittering on his eye there came
Of opal light and ruby flame;
But they fell on the brain's obscurity,
Like the beam, absorb'd that may not be
In the pitchy waves of Galilee.

The Dead Sea. See Josephus, Clarke's Travels, &c.

They cannot his clouded soul engage
That had purchas'd a monarch's heritage;—
There were tones of wo and voices loud
That had woke the dead from their coffin and shroud—
They fell on his ear like the trumpet's breath
That shall rouse him from the sleep of death—
They died on his soul like the murmur'd roar
Of ocean heard on a distant shore.
He trod where a snake had made her nest,
And the slimy brood to death he prest,—

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The parent her venom'd tongue thrust out
And tight, his leg she wound about,—
He slipp'd in the slime as he trod on her head,
But he heard not the hissing fierce she made;
He shook off the living, madden'd coil,
As ye dash thro' the tangled forest's toil!