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the condemned.
As from them with effectual bound
I rushed to gain the fatal ground:
With footsteps light, and winged, and wild,
I skimmed the ground to save my child;
Yes, all the stigma, all the shame,
Must blast eternally my name."
Ludovico awakens now,
Thought gathers to his grief-stamped brow,
And for the fixed and vacant stare
His is a look of wild despair;
That voice a horrid scene recalls—
O'erpowered with agony he falls;—
A rush is made, the injured one
Is raised, but life, alas! is gone—
The old man by the lost one stands:
"There's double blood upon these hands—
Oh! guileless blood—yet, once again,
They must receive another stain.
It is too late my son to save
From aught except a murderer's grave."
He raised his arm—a sunbeam played
An instant on a glittering blade;
Another, and a corpse he lies,
With livid face and upturned eyes—
His aged form besmeared with blood,
His grey locks dappled in the flood.
I rushed to gain the fatal ground:
With footsteps light, and winged, and wild,
I skimmed the ground to save my child;
Yes, all the stigma, all the shame,
Must blast eternally my name."
Ludovico awakens now,
Thought gathers to his grief-stamped brow,
And for the fixed and vacant stare
His is a look of wild despair;
That voice a horrid scene recalls—
O'erpowered with agony he falls;—
A rush is made, the injured one
Is raised, but life, alas! is gone—
The old man by the lost one stands:
"There's double blood upon these hands—
Oh! guileless blood—yet, once again,
They must receive another stain.
It is too late my son to save
From aught except a murderer's grave."
He raised his arm—a sunbeam played
An instant on a glittering blade;
Another, and a corpse he lies,
With livid face and upturned eyes—
His aged form besmeared with blood,
His grey locks dappled in the flood.
