Hark to the thunder's awful crash -
Hark to the midnight lightning's hiss!
At length was heard a sullen dash,
Which made the hollow rocks around
Rebellow to the awful sound;
The yawning ocean opening wide
Received me in its vast abyss,
And whelmed me in its foaming tide.
Though my astounded senses fled,
Yet did the spark of life remain;
Then the wild surges of the main
Dashed and left me on the rocky shore.
Oh! would that I had waked no more!
Vain wish! I lived again to feel
Torments more fierce than those of hell!
A tide of keener pain to roll,

And the bruises to enter my inmost soul!

I cast myself in Etna's womb,1
If haply I might meet my doom
In torrents of electric flame;
Thrice happy had I found a grave
'Mid fierce combustion's tumults dire,
'Mid oceans of volcanic fire

Which whirled me in their sulphurous wave,
And scorched to a cinder my hated frame,
Parched up the blood within my veins,
And racked my breast with damning pains,
Then hurled me from the mountain's entrails

dread.

With what unutterable woe

I burn

Even now I feel this bosom glowI melt with fervent heat Again life's pulses wildly beat

What endless throbbing pains I live to feel!
The elements respect their Maker's seal,
That seal deep printed on my fated head.
Still like the scathed pine-tree's height,
Braving the tempests of the night,
Have I'scaped the bickering fire.

Like the scathed pine which a monument stands

Of faded grandeur, which the brands

Of the tempest-shaken air

Have riven on the desolate heath,
Yet it stands majestic even in death,

And rears its wild form there.

Thus have I 'scaped the ocean's roar
The red-hot bolt from God's right hand,
The flaming midnight meteor brand,
And Etna's flames of bickering fire.
Thus am I doomed by fate to stand,

1 'I cast myself from the overhanging summit of the gigantic Teneriffe into the wide weltering ocean. The clouds which hung upon its base below, bore up my o lious weight; the foaming billows, swoln by the fury of the northern blast, opened to receive me, and, burying in a vast abyss, at length dashed my almost inanimate frame against the crags. The bruises entered into my soul, but I awoke to life and all its torments. I precipitated myself into the crater of Vesuvius; the bickering flames and melted lava vomited me up again, and though I felt the tortures of the damned, though the sulphureous bitumen scorched the blood within my veins, parched up my flesh and burnt it to a cinder, still did I live to drag the galling chain of existence on. Repeatedly have I exposed myself to the tempestuous battling of the elements; the clouds which burst upon my head in crash terrific and exterminating, and

A monument of the Eternal's ire ;
Nor can this being pass away,
Till time shall be no more.

I pierce with intellectual eye,
Into each hidden mystery;
I penetrate the fertile womb
Of nature; I produce to light
The secrets of the teeming earth,
And give air's unseen embryos birth;
The past, the present, and to come,
Float in review before my sight;
To me is known the magic spell,
To summon e'en the Prince of Hell;
Awed by the Cross upon my head,
His fiends would obey my mandates dread,
To twilight change the blaze of noon
And stain with spots of blood the moon-
But that an interposing hand

Restrains my potent arts, my else supreme command.

He raised his passion-quivering hand,

He loosed the gray encircling band,

A burning Cross was there;

Its color was like to recent blood,
Deep marked upon his brow it stood,
And spread a lambent glare.
Dimmer grew the taper's blaze,
Dazzled by the brighter rays,

Whilst Paulo spoke - 't was dead of night-
Fair Rosa shuddered with affright;
Victorio, fearless, had braved death
Upon the blood-besprinkled heath;
Had heard, unmoved, the cannon's roar,
Echoing along the Wolga's shore.

When the thunder of battle was swelling,
When the birds for their dead prey were yelling,
When the ensigns of slaughter were stream-

ing,

And falchions and bayonets were gleaming,
And almost felt death's chilling hand,
Stretched on ensanguined Wolga's strand,
And, careless, scorned for life to cry,

Yet now he turned aside his eye,
Scarce could his death-like terror bear,
And owned now what it was to fear.

[PAULO]

Once a funeral met my aching sight,
It blasted my eyes at the dead of night,

the flaming thunderbolt, hurled headlong on me its victim, stunned but not destroyed me. The lightning, in bickering coruscation, blasted me; and like the scattered [? shattered] oak, which remains a monument of faded grandeur, and outlives the other monarchs of the forest, doomed me to live forever. Nine times did this dagger enter into my heart the ensanguined tide of existence followed the repeated plunge; at each stroke, unutterable anguish seized my frame, and every limb was convulsed by the pangs of approaching dissolution. The wounds still closed, and still I

breathe the hated breath of life.'

I have endeavored to deviate as little as possible from the extreme sublimity of idea which the style of the German author, of which this is a translation, so forci bly impresses.

life's gore;

'Twas then I fell on the ensanguined earth,
And cursed the mother who gave me birth!
My maddened brain could bear no more —
Hark! the chilling whirlwind's roar;
The spirits of the tombless dead
Flit around my fated head, -

Howl horror and destruction round,

As they quaff my blood that stains the ground, And shriek amid their deadly stave,'Never shalt thou find the grave!

Ever shall thy fated soul

In life's protracted torments roll,

Till, in latest ruin hurled,

And fate's destruction, sinks the world!

Till the dead arise from the yawning ground,
To meet their Maker's last decree,
Till angels of vengeance flit around,
And loud yelling demons seize on thee !'
Ah! would were come that fated hour,
When the clouds of chaos around shall lower;
When this globe calcined by the fury of God
Shall sink beneath his wrathful nod! —

she rode

The heavy mists, encircling, wreathe,
Disperse, and gradually unfold
A youthful female form ;-
Upon a rosy-tinted cloud;
Bright streamed her flowing locks of gold;
She shone with radiant lustre bright,
And blazed with strange and dazzling light;
A diamond coronet decked her brow,
Bloomed on her cheek a vermeil glow;
The terrors of her fiery eye
Poured forth insufferable day,
And shed a wildly lurid ray.
A smile upon her features played,
But there, too, sate portrayed
The inventive malice of a soul
Where wild demoniac passions roll;
Despair and torment on her brow,
Had marked a melancholy woe
In dark and deepened shade.
Under these hypocritic smiles,
Deceitful as the serpent's wiles,

Her hate and malice were concealed;
Whilst on her guilt-confessing face,
Conscience the strongly printed trace
Of agony betrayed,

And all the fallen angel stood revealed.

She held a poniard in her hand,

The point was tinged by the lightning's brand;

In her left a scroll she bore,
Crimsoned deep with human gore;
And, as above my head she stood,
Bade me smear it with my blood."
She said that when it was my doom
That every earthly pang should cease,
The evening of my mortal woe
Would close beneath the yawning tomb,
And, lulled into the arms of death,

I should resign my laboring breath,
And in the sightless realms below
Enjoy an endless reign of peace.

She ceased - O, God, I thank thy grace,
Which bade me spurn the deadly scroll;
Uncertain for a while I stood

The dagger's point was in my blood.
Even now I bleed ! - I bleed!
When suddenly what horrors flew,

Quick as the lightnings, through my frame;
Flashed on my mind the infernal deed,
The deed which would condemn my soul
To torments of eternal flame.

Drops colder than the cavern dew

Quick coursed each other down my face,

I labored for my breath;

At length I cried, Avaunt! thou fiend of Hell, Avaunt! thou minister of death!'

I cast the volume on the ground,

Loud shrieked the fiend with piercing yell,

And more than mortal iaughter pealed around.
The scattered fragments of the storm
Floated along the Demon's form,
Dilating till it touched the sky;

The clouds that rolled athwart his eye,
Revealed by its terrific ray,
Brilliant as the noontide day,
Gleamed with a lurid fire;

Red lightnings darted around his head,
Thunders hoarse as the groans of the dead
Pronounced their Maker's ire;
A whirlwind rushed impetuous by,
Chaos of horror filled the sky;

I sunk convulsed with awe and dread.
When I waked the storm was fled.
But sounds unholy met my ear,
And fiends of hell were flitting near.

Here let me pause-here end my tale,
My mental powers begin to fail
At this short retrospect I faint;
Scarce beats my pulse- I lose my breath,
I sicken even unto death.

Oh! hard would be the task to paint
And gift with life past scenes again;
To knit a long and linkless chain,

Or strive minutely to relate

The varied horrors of my fate.
Rosa! I could a tale disclose,

So full of horror-full of woes,

Such as might blast a demon's ear,
Such as a fiend might shrink to hear -
But, no-

Here ceased the tale. Convulsed with fear,
The tale yet lived in Rosa's ear-
She felt a strange mysterious dread,
A chilling awe as of the dead;

Gleamed on her sight the Demon's form?
Heard she the fury of the storm?
The cries and hideous yells of death?
Tottered the ground her feet beneath?
Was it the fiend before her stood?
Saw she the poniard drop with blood?
All seemed to her distempered eye
A true and sad reality.

-

Who stands amid his works confessed
The first the noblest and the best,
Whose vast- whose comprehensive eye,
Is bounded only by the sky,

O'erlook the charms which Nature yields,
The garniture of woods and fields,
The sun's all vivifying light,
The glory of the moon by night,
And to himself alone a foe,

Forget from whom these blessings flow?
And is there not in friendship's eye,
Beaming with tender sympathy,
An antidote to every woe?
And cannot woman's love bestow
An heavenly paradise below?
Such joys as these to man are given,
And yet you dare to rail at Heaven;
Vainly oppose the Almighty Cause,
Transgress His universal laws;
Forfeit the pleasures that await
The virtuous in this mortal state;

Question the goodness of the Power on high,
In misery live, despairing die.

What then is man, how few his days,

And heightened by what transient rays;
Made up of plans of happiness,

Of visionary schemes of bliss;

The varying passions of his mind
Inconstant, varying as the wind;
Now hushed to apathetic rest,

Now tempested with storms his breast;
Now with the fluctuating tide

Sunk low in meanness, swoln with pride;
Thoughtless, or overwhelmed with care,
Hoping, or tortured by despair!

The sun had sunk beneath the hill,
Soft fell the dew, the scene was still ;
All nature hailed the evening's close.
Far more did lovely Rosa bless
The twilight of her happiness.
Even Paulo blessed the tranquil hour
As in the aromatic bower,

Or wandering through the olive grove,
He told his plaintive tale of love;
But welcome to Victorio's soul

Did the dark clouds of evening roll!
But, ah! what means his hurried pace,
Those gestures strange, that varying face;

Now pale with mingled rage and ire,
Now burning with intense desire;

That brow where brood the imps of care,
That fixed expression of despair,
That haste, that laboring for breath-
His soul is madly bent on death.
A dark resolve is in his eye,
Victorio raves - I hear him cry,
Rosa is Paulo's eternally.'

But whence is that soul-harrowing moan,
Deep drawn and half suppressed

A low and melancholy tone,
That rose upon the wind?
Victorio wildly gazed around,

He cast his eyes upon the ground,
He raised them to the spangled air,
But all was still was quiet there.
Hence, hence, this superstitious fear;
'Twas but the fever of his mind
That conjured the ideal sound,
To his distempered ear.

With rapid step, with frantic haste,
He scoured the long and dreary waste;
And now the gloomy cypress spread
Its darkened umbrage o'er his head;
The stately pines above him high
Lifted their tall heads to the sky;
Whilst o'er his form, the poisonous yew
And melancholy nightshade threw
Their baleful deadly dew.

At intervals the moon shone clear;
Yet, passing o'er her disk, a cloud
Would now her silver beauty shroud.
The autumnal leaf was parched and sere;
It rustled like a step to fear.
The precipice's battled height

Was dimly seen through the mists of night,
As Victorio moved along.

At length he reached its summit dread,
The night-wind whistled round his head
A wild funereal song.

A dying cadence swept around

Upon the waste of air;

It scarcely might be called a sound,

For stillness yet was there,

Save when the roar of the waters below

Was wafted by fits to the mountain's brow.
Here for a while Victorio stood

Suspended o'er the yawning flood,
And gazed upon the gulf beneath.
No apprehension paled his cheek,
No sighs from his torn bosom break,
No terror dimmed his eye.

'Welcome, thrice welcome, friendly death,'
In desperate harrowing tone he cried,
Receive me, ocean, to your breast,
Hush this ungovernable tide,
This troubled sea to rest.

Thus do I bury all my grief

This plunge shall give my soul relief,
This plunge into eternity!"

I see him now about to spring
Into the watery grave:

Hark! the death angel flaps his wing
O'er the blackened wave.

Hark! the night-raven shrieks on high
To the breeze which passes on;

In thought's perplexing labyrinth lost
The trackless heath he swiftly crossed.
Ah! why did terror blanch his cheek?
Why did his tongue attempt to speak,
And fail in the essay?

Through the dark midnight mists an eye,
Flashing with crimson brilliancy,
Poured on his face its ray.

'What sighs pollute the midnight air?
What mean those breathings of despair?'
Thus asked a voice, whose hollow tone
Might seem but one funereal moan.
Victorio groaned, with faltering breath,
'I burn with love, I pant for death!'

Suddenly a meteor's glare,

With brilliant flash illumed the air;
Bursting through clouds of sulphurous smoke,
As on a Witch's form it broke,

Of herculean bulk her frame
Seemed blasted by the lightning's flame;
Her eyes that flared with lurid light,
Were now with bloodshot lustre filled.
They blazed like comets through the night,
And now thick rheumy gore distilled;

Terror unmanned Victorio's mind,
His limbs, like lime leaves in the wind,
Shook, and his brain in wild dismay
Swam vainly he strove to turn away.
Follow me to the mansions of rest,'
The weird female cried;

The life-blood rushed through Victorio's breast
In full and swelling tide.

Attractive as the eagle's gaze,

And bright as the meridian blaze,
Led by a sanguine stream of light,

He followed through the shades of night -
Before him his conductress fled,
As swift as the ghosts of the dead,
When on some dreadful errand they fly,
In a thunderblast sweeping the sky.

They reached a rock whose beetling height
Was dimly seen through the clouds of night;
Illumined by the meteor's blaze,

Its wild crags caught the reddened rays
And their refracted brilliance threw
Around a solitary yew,

Which stretched its blasted form on high,
Braving the tempests of the sky.
As glared the flame, a caverned cell,
More pitchy than the shades of hell,"
Lay open to Victorio's view.
Lost for an instant was his guide;
He rushed into the mountain's side.
At length with deep and harrowing yell
She bade him quickly speed,
For that ere again had risen the moon
'T was fated that there must be done
A strange - a deadly deed.

Swift as the wind Victorio sped;
Beneath him lay the mangled dead;
Around dank putrefaction's power
Had caused a dim blue mist to lower.
Yet an unfixed, a wandering light
Dispersed the thickening shades of night;
Yet the weird female's features dire
Gleamed through the lurid yellow air,
With a deadly livid fire,

Whose wild, inconstant, dazzling light
Dispelled the tenfold shades of night,
Whilst her hideous fiendlike eye,
Fixed on her victim with horrid stare,
Flamed with more kindled radiancy;
More frightful far than that of Death,

When exulting he stalks o'er the battle heath;
Or of the dread prophetic form,

Who rides the curled clouds in the storm,
And borne upon the tempest's wings,
Death, despair, and horror brings.

An ancient book

Of mystic characters she took;
Her loose locks floated on the air;
Her eyes were fixed in lifeless stare;
She traced a circle on the floor,
Around dank chilling vapors lower;
A golden cross on the pavement she threw,
'T was tinged with a flame of lambent blue,
From which bright scintillations flew ;
By it she cursed her Saviour's soul;
Around strange fiendish laughs did roll,
A hollow, wild, and frightful sound,
At fits was heard to float around.
She uttered then, in accents dread,
Some maddening rhyme that wakes the dead,
And forces every shivering fiend
To her their demon-forms to bend ;
At length a wild and piercing shriek,
As the dark mists disperse and break,
Announced the coming Prince of Hell-
His horrid form obscured the cell.
Victorio shrunk, unused to shrink,
E'en at extremest danger's brink;
The witch then pointed to the ground
Infernal shadows flitted around

And with their Prince were seen to rise;
The cavern bellows with their cries,
Which, echoing through a thousand caves,
Sound like as many tempest waves.

Inspired and wrapped in bickering flame,
The strange, the awful being stood.
Words unpremeditated came

In unintelligible flood