Page:Songs from the Southern Seas and Other Poems (1873).djvu/121

Rh Of that gray-blue face and the bleeding breast And the staring eyes in their awful rest. The evening closed on the homicide, And the blood of the buried sawyer cried Through the night to God, and the shadows dark That crossed the camp had the stiff and stark And horrible look of a murdered man! Then he piled the fire, and crept within The ring of its light, that closed him in Like tender mercy, and drove away For a time the spectres that stood at bay, And waited to clutch him as demons wait, Shut out from the sinner by Faith's bright gate. But the fire burnt low, and the slayer slept, And the key of his sleep was always kept By the leaden hand of him he had slain, That oped the door but to drench the brain With agony cruel. The night wind crept Like a snake on the shuddering form that slept And dreamt, and woke and shrieked; for there, With its gray-blue lines and its ghastly stare,