Poems (Douglas)/The Condemned
The Condemned.
My lost one, I behold her yet,All lovely as when first we met:A brow more sweet, more downy fair,Never gleamed beneath luxuriant hair;Her eye how softly languishing!Though darker than the raven's wing,Its beams were brighter than the starBeheld in the blue heavens afar;From 'neath its fringe of silken jetIt languishes upon me yet. Her silvery voice, I hear it too,Glad as when last we breathed adieu,With promise soon again to meet,At evening, in our loved retreat:She grasps my hand in girlish play,Then bounds with fawn-like step away.I see her wavy hair unbound,Which almost sweeps the very ground,Darker than ebony—yet seemsBright gilded with the sunset beams.'Tis said some hand—oh! 'tis not so!—Made from her heart the young blood flow.It cannot be: yet why am IImprisoned—fettered—doomed to die?To die; and she is dead. Ah, me!Reality it cannot be.Let me my wandering thoughts recall;—Oh! now the truth is dawning allUpon my brain:—Great God of power,Support me in this awful hourOf agony and of despair!But hark! there falls upon mine earMy keeper's tread.
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Nay, tremble not,Kind jailer, at my hapless lot;To-morrow's noon, and all is o'er,Then this wronged heart shall beat no more. Did I acknowledge it? oh! no:Say, jailer, did I strike the blow?Yes, thou wert present at the timeWhen I denied or owned the crime.I saw thee there when I was ledTo gaze upon the fearful bed,As each excited crowd made wayThat I might touch the pale cold clay.Seemed I reluctant to approach,Or did I dread that brow to touch?They said, had I the murder done,Fresh from the wound the blood would run;But when to the pale corpse I turnedI could not breathe, my eye-balls turned.I saw my father standing there,With placid brow and silver hair:I heard his voice—then reason fled,I only felt that she was dead.I knew I stood beside the couch,I know not if I dared to touch:Say, jailer, did the victim bleed,In witness that I did the deed?I know not what I mentioned there,I only found that I was here,With shackled limbs, condemned to payMy life for her's I took away.I took—just powers! yet it must be—The crime, the suffering rest on me.Could I free pardon now procure,I would not—nay, I will endure; This night in penitence I spend—To-morrow's noon, and all shall end.
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'Tis early morn: the pale, dim lightFalls faintly upon tower and height;A peaceful hamlet's walls of snowGleam 'mid the darkness spread below;And yet, so shrouded, all would seemAs faint and shadowy as a dreamWhich-dimly falls upon the mind,Confused, and dark, and undefined.Slow noddling like a hearse's plume,The copeswood waves amid the gloom,As ever and anon the galeSeems sighing forth some mournful tale.And there, upon the misty green,Some darksome object's dimly seen;Though half-confounded with the shadeOf backgrounds, there's enough displayedOf outline 'gainst the dawning lightTo make one shudder at the sight.It is a scaffold! When upreared?None saw the fatal thing prepared;Yet, when the sombre clouds gave wayBefore the beaming face of day,'Tis there, and crowds are hastening nigh—It is the hour when he must die.A murmur rose amongst the throng;The doomed one now is led along; A tear-drop starts in every eye,Save his whose heart is seared and dry,Who gazes on the crowd like oneWhose latest spark of reason's gone.
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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 nightWhen not a starlet lends its light.The breezy locks which wildly flowO'er that drooped brow are tinged with snow;Those vacant locks, so glazed and dim,Are not the speaking eyes of himWhose gay, bewitching glance of fireMight 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 strangeThat he of such exalted mindTo that dark deed could be resigned.What demon urged to deal the blowThat laid our village beauty low? And she his own betrothed—his own!—For such a crime what could atone?Ill-guided youth, while life is thine,Fly to the mercy-seat divine—Raise up those blood-stained hands in prayer,A King, a mighty Judge is there.
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Hark! hark! a cry, so wild and loud,It thrills through all that silent crowd:An old man, with his bosom bare,And streaming wild his silver hair,Like lightning rushes 'mid the throng."Stay, stay thy hand, the deed is wrong,I am the murderer—yes I—The fiend incarnate who must die.Impelled by avarice I slewThat maiden, pure as mountain dew.The truth was ascertained by noneSave my self-sacrificing son,Who would his spotless life resignFrom #this to save accursed mine.On him suspicion strongly fell,And seeming facts confirmed it well.Long has madness burned my brain,But now I am myself again;To me unearthly strength was given—My strongest cords with ease were riven.My keepers, terrified, beheld—They knew not what my mind impelled, As from them with effectual boundI 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 stareHis is a look of wild despair;That voice a horrid scene recalls—O'erpowered with agony he falls;—A rush is made, the injured oneIs 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 saveFrom aught except a murderer's grave."He raised his arm—a sunbeam playedAn 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.