COUNTESS LAURA.
IT was a dreary day in Padua;The Countess Laura, for a single yearFernando's wife, upon her bridal bed,Like an uprooted lily on the snow,The withered outcast of a festival,Lay dead. She died of some uncertain ill,That struck her almost on her wedding-day,And clung to her, and dragged her slowly down,Thinning her cheeks and pinching her full lips,Till, in her chance, it seemed that with a yearFull half a century was overpast.In vain had Paracelsus taxed his art,And feigned a knowledge of her malady;In vain had all the doctors, far and near,Gathered around the mystery of her bed.Draining her veins, her husband's treasury,And physic's jargon, in a fruitless questFor causes equal to the dread result.The Countess only smiled when they were gone,Hugged her fair body with her little hands,And turned upon her pillows wearily,As though she fain would sleep, no common sleep,But the long, breathless slumber of the grave.She hinted nothing. Feeble as she was,The rack could not have wrung her secret out.The Bishop, when he shrived her, coming forth,
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