e all else,
keep wives--
Or sweethearts or what they may be--from ink! Not a word now, on your
lives!"

Black? but the Pit's own pitch was white to the Captain's face--the
brute
With the bloated cheeks and the bulgy nose and the bloodshot eyes
to suit!
He was muddled with wine, they say: more like, he was out of his
wits with fear;
He had but a handful of men, that's true,--a riot might cost him
dear.

And all that time stood Rosamund Page, with pinioned arms and face
Bandaged about, on the turf marked out for the party's firing-place.
I hope she was wholly with God: I hope 'twas His angel stretched
a hand
To steady her so, like the shape of stone you see in our
church-aisle stand.

I hope there was no vain fancy pierced the bandage to vex her eyes,
No face within which she missed without, no questions and no replies--
"Why did you leave me to die?"--"Because...." Oh, fiends, too soon
you grin
At merely a moment of hell, like that--such heaven as hell ended in!

Let mine end too! He gave the word, up went the guns in a line.
Those heaped on the hill were blind as dumb,--for, of all eyes,
only mine
Looked over the heads of the foremost rank. Some fell on their knees
in prayer,
Some sank to the earth, but all shut eyes, with a sole exception
there.

That was myself, who had stolen up last, had sidled behind the group:
I am highest of all on the hill-top, there stand fixed while the
others stoop!
From head to foot in a serpent's twine am I tightened: _I_ touch
ground?
No more than a gibbet's rigid corpse which the fetters rust around!

Can I speak, can I breathe, can I burst--aught else but see, see,
only see?
And see I do--for there comes in sight--a man, it sure must be!--
Who staggeringly, stumblingly rises, falls, rises, at random flings
his weight
On and on, anyhow onward--a man that's mad he arrives too late!

Else why does he wave a something white high-flourished above his
head?
Why does not he call, cry,--curse the fool!--why throw up his arms
instead?
O take his fist in your own face, fool! Why does not yourself shout
"Stay!
Here's a man comes rushing, might and main, with something he's mad