Page:The Fall of the Alamo.djvu/198

 I should have deemed it all-too-fair a gift. And now, and now—I feel your bosoms throb 'Gainst mine in joyful, neighborly response, I drink the life-warm ardor of your kisses, I hear the love-thrilled, touching tremolo Of both your voices, and my dazzled eye Reads in your" looks and on your glowing cheeks The true reflex of all that moves your hearts, While impotent to fathom yet the secret Of your arrival here, my thoughts stand still. Thou errest, brother, if thou ween'st that I Can solve for thee this deep-mysterious riddle. For lo! as sudden as it dawned on thee. Inexplicable, as it stands before Thy staggered mind,—so wondrous and so strange. It still enwraps my own with dream-like spell.— Three hours ago I lay in dizzy sleep, In which appalling night and battle-smoke Spread o'er my feverish soul a somber sky, —As dark and dread as my impending fate— While demon-like, uncouth, gigantic shapes With hangman's features stretched their withered hands Up, up to me with ever closer grasp,— When in the cloud-wrapt back-ground of my dream Appeared a balmy, mellow-tinted light, That more and more shed through the desert waste