In the still and moony hour

Of that calm entwining sleep,
From the utmost tombs of earth,
The vision-land of death and birth,
Came a black malignant power,
A spectre of the desert deep.

And it is Plague, the spotted fiend, the drunkard of the tomb;
Upon her mildewed temples the thunderbolts of doom,
And blight-buds of hell's red fire, like gory wounds in bloom,

Are twisted for a wreath;

And there's a chalice in her hand, whence bloody flashes gleam, While struggling snakes with arrowy tongues twist o'er it for

a steam,

And its liquor is of Phlegethon, and Ætna's wrathful stream, And icy dews of death.

Like a rapid dream she came,

And vanished like the flame

Of a burning ship at sea,

But to his shrinking lips she pressed
The cup of boiling misery,
And he quaffed it in his tortured rest,
And woke in the pangs of lunacy.

As a buried soul awaking

From the cycle of its sleep,

Panic-struck and sad doth lie

Beneath its mind's dim canopy,

And marks the stars of memory breaking

From 'neath oblivion's ebbing deep,

While clouds of doubt bewilder the true sky,-
So in the hieroglyphic portal

Of his dreams sate Balthasar,

Awake amidst his slumbering senses,

And felt as feels man's ghost immortal,
Whom the corpse's earthen fences
From his vast existence bar.
The pestilence was in his breast,

And boiled and bubbled o'er his brain,

His thoughtless eyes in their unrest

Would have burst their circling chain, Scattering their fiery venom wide,

But for the soft endearing rain, With which the trembler at his side

Fed those gushing orbs of white,

As evening feeds the waves with looks of quiet light: The tear upon his cheek's fierce flush ;

The cool breath on his brow;

And the healthy presage of a blush,
Sketched in faint tints behind his skin;

And the hush of settling thoughts within,

Sabra hath given, and she will need them now.

For, as the echo of a grove

Keeps it's dim shadow 'neath some song of love,
And gives her life away to it in sound,
Soft spreading her wild harmony,

Like a tress of smoking censery,

Or a ring of water round,—

So all the flowery wealth

Of her happiness and health

Untwined from Sabra's strength, and grew

Into the blasted stem of Balthasar's pale life,

And his is the beauty and bliss that flew

On the wings of her love from his sinking wife.

The fading wanness of despair

Was the one colour of her cheek,

And tears upon her bosom fair,

Wrote the woe she dared not speak;
But life was in her. Yes it played
In tremulous and fitful grace,

Like a flame's reflected breath
Shivering in the throes of death

Against the monumental face

Of some sad voiceless marble maid:

And what is a woman to Balthasar,

Whom love has weakened, bowed, and broken?

Upon his forehead's darksome war,

His lip's curled meaning, yet unspoken,

The lowering of his wrinkled brow

"Tis graved, he spurns, he loathes her now.

Along the sea, at night's black noon,

Alone the king and lady float,

With music in a snowy boat,

That glides in light, an ocean-moon;

From billow to billow it dances,

And the spray around it glances,

And the mimic rocks and caves

Beneath the mountains of the waves,

Reflect a joyous song

As the merry bark is borne along;
And now it stays its eager sail
Within a dark sepulchral vale,

Amid the living Alps of Ocean,
Round which the crags in tumult rise
And make a fragment of the skies;

That agonizes the still air,

And makes the dead day move and speak From beneath its midnight pall,

Or the ruined billow's fall?

The boat is soaring lighter there, The voice of woman sounds no moreThat night the water-crescent bore Dark Balthasar alone unto the living shore.

Tears, tears for Sabra: who will weep?

O blossoms, ye have dew,

And grief-dissembling storms might strew Thick-dropping woe upon her sleep. False sea, why dost thou look like sorrow,

Why is thy cold heart of water?

Or rather, why are tears of thee,
Compassionless bad sea?

For not a drop does thy stern spirit borrow,
To mourn o'er beauty's fairest daughter.
Heaven, blue heaven, thou art not kind,

Or else the sun is not thine eye,
For thou shouldst be with weeping blind,
Not thus forgetful, bright and dry.
Oh that I were a plume of snow

To melt away and die

In a long chain of bubbling harmony!

My tribute shall be sweet tho' small; A cup of the vale-lily bloom

Filled with white and liquid woe

Give it to her ocean pall;

With such deluge-seeds I'll sow

Her mighty elemental tomb,

Until the lamentations grow

Into a foaming crop of populous overflow.

Hither like a bird of prey,

Whom red anticipations feed,
Flaming along the fearful day

Revenge's thirsty hour doth fly.

Heaven has said a fearful word;

(Which hell's eternal labyrinths heard,

And the wave of time

Shall answer to the depths sublime

Reflecting it in deed ;)

"Balthasar the king must die." Must die; for all his power is fled,

His spells dissolved, his spirits gone,

And magic cannot ease the bed

Where lies the necromant alone.

What thought is gnawing in his heart, What struggles madly in his brain? See, the force, the fiery pain

Of silence makes his eyeballs start.

O ease thy bosom, dare to tell

But grey-haired pity speaks in vain,
That bitter shriek, that hopeless yell,
Has given the secret safe to hell.