Even as we gaze, the fancy
With a sudden life-gush warms,
And, once more, the Torture Chamber,
With its murderous tenants swarms.
Yonder, through the narrow archway,
Comes the culprit in the gloom,
Falters on the fatal threshold--
Totters to the bloody doom.
Here the executioner, lurking,
Waits, with brutal thirst, his hour,
Tool of bloodier men and bolder,
Drunken with the dregs of power.
There the careful leech sits patient,
Watching pulse, and hue, and breath,
Weighing life's remaining scruples
With the heavier chance of death.
Eking out the little remnant,
Lest the victim die too soon,
And the torture of the morning
Spare the torture of the noon.
Here, behind the heavy grating,
Sits the scribe, with pen and scroll,
Waiting till the giant terror
Bursts the secrets of the soul;
Till the fearful tale of treason
From the shrinking lips is wrung,
Or the final, false confession
Quivers from the trembling tongue;
When the spirit, torn and tempted,
Tried beyond its utmost scope,
By an anguish past endurance,
Madly cancels all its hope;
From the pointed cliffs of torture,
With its shrieks upon the air,
Suicidal, plunging blindly,
In the frenzy of despair!
* * * * *
But the grey old tower is fading,
Fades, in sunshine, from the eye,
Like some evil bird whose pinion
Dimly blots the distant sky.
Pages:
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221