Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 3.djvu/558

520 And those who saw, it did surprise,

Such drops could fall from human eyes.

To speak she thought—the imperfect note

Was choked within her swelling throat,

Yet seemed in that low hollow groan

Her whole heart gushing in the tone.

It ceased—again she thought to speak,

Then burst her voice in one long shriek,

And to the earth she fell like stone

Or statue from its base o'erthrown,

More like a thing that ne'er had life,—

A monument of Azo's wife,—

Than her, that living guilty thing,

Whose every passion was a sting,

Which urged to guilt, but could not bear

That guilt's detection and despair.

But yet she lived—and all too soon

Recovered from that death-like swoon—

But scarce to reason—every sense

Had been o'erstrung by pangs intense;

And each frail fibre of her brain

(As bowstrings, when relaxed by rain,

The erring arrow launch aside)

Sent forth her thoughts all wild and wide—

The past a blank, the future black,

With glimpses of a dreary track,

Like lightning on the desert path,

When midnight storms are mustering wrath.

She feared—she felt that something ill

Lay on her soul, so deep and chill;

That there was sin and shame she knew,

That some one was to die—but who?

She had forgotten:—did she breathe?

Could this be still the earth beneath,