VI.
Still onward, solemnly and slow,
And speaking not a word, they go,
Till pausing in their way before
Mazelli's quiet cottage door,
They gently lay their burden down.
Whence comes that shriek of wild despair
That rises wildly on the air?
Whose is the arm so fondly thrown
Around the cold, unconscious clay,
That cannot its caress repay?
Such wordless wo was in that cry,
Such pain, such hopeless agony,
No soul, excluded from the sky,
Whom unrelenting justice hath
Condemned to bear the second death,
E'er breathed upon the troubled gale
A wilder or a sadder wail;--
It rose, all other sounds above,
The dirge of peace, and hope, and love!
VII.
And day on weary day went by,
And like the drooping autumn leaf,
She faded slow and silently,
In her deep, uncomplaining grief;
For, sick of life's vacuity,
She neither sought nor wished relief.
And daily from her cheek, the glow
Departed, and her virgin brow
Was curtained with a mournful gloom,--
A shade prophetic, of the tomb;
And her clear eyes, so blue and bright,
Shot forth a keen, unearthly light,
As if the soul that in them lay,
Were weary of its garb of clay,
And prayed to pass from earth away;
Nor was that prayer vain, for ere
The frozen monarch of the year,
Had blighted, with his icy breath,
A single bud in summer's wreath,
They shrouded her, and made her grave,
And laid her down at Lodolph's side;
And by the wide Potomac's wave,
Repose the bridegroom and the bride.
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