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the condemned.
A tear-drop starts in every eye,
Save his whose heart is seared and dry,
Who gazes on the crowd like one
Whose latest spark of reason's gone.
Save his whose heart is seared and dry,
Who gazes on the crowd like one
Whose latest spark of reason's gone.
******
The victim on the platform stands,
With drooping head and clasped hands.
Is he the youth whose glossy hair,
When floating in the gladsome air,
Seemed darker than the shade of night
When not a starlet lends its light.
The breezy locks which wildly flow
O'er that drooped brow are tinged with snow;
Those vacant locks, so glazed and dim,
Are not the speaking eyes of him
Whose gay, bewitching glance of fire
Might well the coldest heart inspire;
Can that pale cheek, with death so fraught,
Be his which blushed the rose to naught?
Tall as a mountain larch he stood,
The straightest cedar in the wood:
That wasted form, so bowed to earth,
Cannot be his—all life and mirth.
Perchance repentance wrought that change,
Or long confinement. Ah! how strange
That he of such exalted mind
To that dark deed could be resigned.
What demon urged to deal the blow
That laid our village beauty low?
With drooping head and clasped hands.
Is he the youth whose glossy hair,
When floating in the gladsome air,
Seemed darker than the shade of night
When not a starlet lends its light.
The breezy locks which wildly flow
O'er that drooped brow are tinged with snow;
Those vacant locks, so glazed and dim,
Are not the speaking eyes of him
Whose gay, bewitching glance of fire
Might well the coldest heart inspire;
Can that pale cheek, with death so fraught,
Be his which blushed the rose to naught?
Tall as a mountain larch he stood,
The straightest cedar in the wood:
That wasted form, so bowed to earth,
Cannot be his—all life and mirth.
Perchance repentance wrought that change,
Or long confinement. Ah! how strange
That he of such exalted mind
To that dark deed could be resigned.
What demon urged to deal the blow
That laid our village beauty low?
