'When the deed was done, in horror I gazed On the face of the murder'd dead; His dark and brilliant eye was glazed: When I thought for a moment his arm he raised, I hid my face in the bed. 'I could not move from the spot where I stood; A chilliness froze my mind: My clothes were dyed with my brother's blood, The body lay in a crimson flood, Which clotted his hair behind! 'And over my heart that moment pass'd A vision of former years, Ere sin upon my soul had cast It's withering blight, it's poison-blast, It's cloud of guilty fears. 'The home where our youth's first hours flew by, In its beauty before me rose; The holy love of our mother's eye, Our childhood's pure and cloudless sky And its light and fleeting woes. 'When our hearts in strong affection's chain Were so closely, fondly tied, That our thoughts and feelings, pleasure and pain, Were one: why did we not remain Through life thus side by side? 'And my brother's gentle voice then fell Upon my tortured ear; Those tones I once had loved so well, Now wither'd my soul like a flame from hell With vain remorse and fear! 'All, all that memory still had kept In her hidden and silent reign, My youth's warm feelings, which long had slept, Like a torrent of fire that moment swept In madness o'er my brain. 'For before me there _his_ pallid face In death's cold stillness lay; Even murder could not all efface Its beauty, whose sad and shadowy trace Still lingered round that clay. 'Sternly I bent me over the dead, And strove my breast to steel, When the dagger from hilt to point blood-red, Flash'd on my sight, and I madly fled, The torture of life to feel. 'Since that dread hour o'er half the earth My weary path has lain; I have stood where the mighty Nile has birth, Where Ganges rolls his blue waves forth In triumph to the main. 'In the silent forest's gloomy shade I have vainly sought for rest; My sunless dwelling I have made Where the hungry tiger nightly stray'd, And the serpent found a nest. 'But still, where'er I turn'd, there lay My brother's lifeless form; When I watched the cataract's giant play As it flung to the sky its foaming spray, When I stood 'midst the rushing storm: 'Still, still that awful face was shown, That dead and soulless eye; The breeze's soft and soothing tone To _me_ still seemed his parting groan-- A sound I could not fly! 'In the fearful silence of the night Still by my couch he stood, And when morn came forth in splendor bright, Still there, between me and the light, Was traced that scene of blood!' * * * * * He paused: Death's icy hand was laid Upon his burning brow; That eye, whose fiery glance had made His sternest guards shrink back afraid, Was glazed and sightless now.