Page:Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë, 1846).djvu/15

Rh To have, by this grim power, their vengeance wrought;

By this mean reptile, innocence to sting.

Oh! could I but the purposed doom avert,

And shield the blameless head from cruel hurt!

Accessible is Pilate's heart to fear,

Omens will shake his soul, like autumn leaf;

Could he this night's appalling vision hear,

This just man's bonds were loosed, his life were safe,

Unless that bitter priesthood should prevail,

And make even terror to their malice quail.

Yet if I tell the dream—­but let me pause.

What dream? Erewhile the characters were clear,

Graved on my brain—­at once some unknown cause

Has dimmed and rased the thoughts, which now appear,

Like a vague remnant of some by-past scene;—

Not what will be, but what, long since, has been.

I suffered many things, I heard foretold

A dreadful doom for Pilate,­—lingering woes,

In far, barbarian climes, where mountains cold

Built up a solitude of trackless snows,

There, he and grisly wolves prowled side by side,

There he lived famished—­there methought he died;

But not of hunger, nor by malady;

I saw the snow around him, stained with gore;