Page:Satanella (1932).pdf/69

 Last few days' disturbed occurrence:

Roderigo's stay in prison,

Satanella's cruel judgment,

Pestilence that every moment

Claims new victims on the island;

All this in his mind was seething

As volcanoes' boiling lava,

As the young wine's effervescence.

Long he sat, then filled the goblet,

Drank and fell to further musing.

Till at length the moon's white roundness

Poured its flood of streaming brightness

'cross front wall of refectory,

Where from floor to ceiling reaching

Stood a hearth work queerly fashioned,

As if led by moon's carresses

Grand-master his bald-pate raises

To observe the moonbeams' dancing

O'er the hearth, along its cornice,

Over queerly fashioned flowers,

O'er the arabesques entwining,

And the statues bulging cluster.

Seems the longer he was gazing

He beheld new forms and features

That passed formerly unnoticed.