Page:Tales of humour and romance translated by Holcroft.djvu/223

 body with its rosy cheeks, its unwrinkled brow, and its pure hands, slip down into the second cradle, and you have only exchanged one Paradise for another;—but we, alas, we fall down beneath the destroying tempests of life, our hearts are weary, our faces are furrowed with earthly anxiety and earthly sorrow, and yet our souls cling strongly to this clod!

Turn thou away from Rosamond's piercing shriek—her fixed look and petrified features—if thou hast already felt this maternal sorrow,—look not upon the mother, who, with senseless love, presses convulsively to her bosom the corpse which she can no longer hurt, but upon the father, whose struggling heart although concealed in the silence of his breast, is sorrounded by the adder grasp of grief, and poisoned by drops from the serpent tooth of sorrow. Alas! Ere he could dispel this sorrow his heart was broken. Man staunches his wounds and fails a victim to the scar—Woman overcomes her sorrow seldom, and yet outlives it.—"Remain here," said he, with a tremulous voice, "I will lay it at rest before the moon rises." She said nothing, kissed it in silence, crumbled down its garland of flowers,—sank upon the sun-dial, and laid her cold cheek upon her arm that she might not see her child carried away.

Meanwhile the silvery morn of the moon illumined