To the Brazils therefore he determined to go, confidently expecting to be there recognized and obeyed; he might then dispatch letters to all the powers of Europe, notifying his existence, and requiring their assistance for the restoration of his rights; to regain those rights without bloodshed was his earnest wish: his heart sickened at the prospect of a civil war, should he, by remaining in Portugal, give the different parties a hope of securing his person; for if those now in authority chose to start doubts of his identity, he must call on his inferior subjects to rise in arms for his support. This extremity was what he sought to avoid: indeed the wounds inflicted by the perfidy of his cousin and mistress, bled inwardly, making every well-known scene hateful to his eyes, and every friend to whom otherwise he might have revealed himself, an object of suspicion. While these thoughts were gloomily displacing the serener melancholy with which he entered his present lodging, he had thrown himself along the ground, and raising his arm to form a support for his head, struck it against something, which, on moving out of the way, he found to be a tablet, with writing on it in discoloured ink. He cast his eyes incuriously over the writing; the first line struck the chief chord in his own breast; and with his hand shading the tablet from the dazzling glare of the cavern, he read the following wild effusion. O that it were no sin to ask for death! Then would I pray to yield this hateful breath; Then from life’s desart vast, its spectred gloom, These eyes would turn and rest upon the tomb! There griefs approach not, pain and thought are still; Nor hope, nor fear, can wake one trembling thrill: Smote by the glare of death’s petrific eye, Locked in eternal ice, life’s currents lie; No more their tides quick-circling through each part, Send warm emotions to the eager heart No more the gates of sense delighted move; No more weak reason yields her throne to love; But all things cease; thought, feeling, mem’ry gone, And black oblivion broods unmarked alone. Whether our souls released, immediate go, Or sleep in trance awhile, we ne’er shall know, Till as our change begins, experience shews The awful secret of the grave’s repose; But pardon, Heav’n! a frantic wretch who dares To own a heart so torn by rending cares, So loathing each remembrance, so possessed, As but to groan and pray for _endless rest_! If when these vital fires have ceased to burn, Thought, or mere consciousness, should e’er return, Say, would not _her_ idea rush again And stab seraphic bliss with piercing pain? Mixed with my being all, for ever mixed, Of change incapable, her thought is fixed, And here on earth, or there in Heav’n would come To render still the same my bitter doom. * * * * *