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COUNTESS LAURA.
"The same, O phantom, while the heart I bearTrembled, but turned not its magnetic faithFrom God's fixed centre." "If I wake for youThis Laura,—give her all the bloom and glowOf that midsummer day you hold so dear,—The smile, the motion, the impulsive soul,The love of genius,—yea, the very love,The mortal, hungry, passionate, hot love,She bore you, flesh to flesh,—would you receiveThat gift, in all its glory, at my hands?"A smile of malice curled the tempter's lips,And glittered in the caverns of his eyes,Mocking the answer, Carlo paled and shook;A woeful spasm went shuddering through his frame,Curdling his blood, and twisting his fair faceWith nameless torture. But he cried aloud,Out of the clouds of anguish, from the smokeOf very martyrdom, "O God, she is thine!Do with her at thy pleasure!" Something grand,And radiant as a sunbeam, touched the headHe bent in awful sorrow. "Mortal, see"———"Dare not! As Christ was sinless, I abjureThese vile abominations! Shall she bearLife's burden twice, and life's temptations twice,While God is justice?"—"Who has made you judgeOf what you call God's good, and what you thinkGod's evil? One to him, the source of both,The God of good and of permitted ill.Have you no dream of days that might have been,Had you and Laura filled another fate?—Some cottage on the sloping Apennines,
