that death-like swoon--
But scarce to reason--every sense
Had been o'erstrung by pangs intense;
And each frail fibre of her brain 360
(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, 370
That some one was to die--but who?
She had forgotten:--did she breathe?
Could this be still the earth beneath,
The sky above, and men around;
Or were they fiends who now so frowned
On one, before whose eyes each eye
Till then had smiled in sympathy?
All was confused and undefined
To her all-jarred and wandering mind;
A chaos of wild hopes and fears: 380
And now in laughter, now in tears,
But madly still in each extreme,
She strove with that convulsive dream;
For so it seemed on her to break:
Oh! vainly must she strive to wake!

XV.

The Convent bells are ringing,
But mournfully and slow;
In the grey square turret swinging,
With a deep sound, to and fro.
Heavily to the heart they go! 390
Hark! the hymn is singing--
The song for the dead below,
Or the living who shortly shall be so!
For a departed being's soul[rc]
The death-hymn peals and the hollow bells knoll:[426]
He is near his mortal goal;
Kneeling at the Friar's knee,
Sad to hear, and piteous to see--
Kneeling on the bare cold ground.
With the block before and the guards around; 400
And the headsman with his bare arm ready,
That the blow may be both swift and steady,
Feels if the axe be sharp and true
Since he set its edge anew:[427]
While the crowd in a speechless circle gather
To see the Son fall by the doom of the Father!

XVI.

It is a lovely hour as yet
Before the summer sun shall set,
Which rose upon that heavy day,
And mock'd it with his steadiest ray; 410
And his evening beams are shed