In vain he weeps, in vain he sighs, Her cheek is cold as ashes; Nor love’s own kiss shall wake those eyes To lift their silken lashes. LOVE AND MADNESS. AN ELEGY. WRITTEN IN 1795. Hark! from the battlements of yonder tower[76] The solemn bell has tolled the midnight hour! Roused from drear visions of distempered sleep, Poor Broderick[77] wakes—in solitude to weep! “Cease, Memory, cease,” the friendless mourner cried, “To probe the bosom too severely tried! Oh! ever cease, my pensive thoughts, to stray Through the bright fields of Fortune’s better day When youthful Hope, the music of the mind, Tuned all its charms, and Errington was kind! “Yet, can I cease, while glows this trembling frame, In sighs to speak thy melancholy name? I hear thy spirit wail in every storm! In midnight shades I view thy passing form! Pale as in that sad hour when doomed to feel, Deep in thy perjured heart, the bloody steel! “Demons of Vengeance! ye at whose command I grasped the sword with more than woman’s hand. Say ye, did Pity’s trembling voice control, Or horror damp the purpose of my soul? No! my wild heart sat smiling o’er the plan, Till Hate fulfilled what baffled Love began! “Yes; let the clay-cold breast that never knew One tender pang to generous Nature true, Half-mingling pity with the gall of scorn, Condemn this heart, that bled in love forlorn! “And ye, proud fair, whose soul no gladness warms, Save Rapture’s homage to your conscious charms! Delighted idols of a gaudy train, Ill can your blunter feelings guess the pain, When the fond faithful heart, inspired to prove Friendship refined, the calm delight of love, Feels all its tender strings with anguish torn, And bleeds at perjured Pride’s inhuman scorn! “Say, then, did pitying Heaven condemn the deed, When Vengeance bade thee, faithless lover! bleed? Long had I watched thy dark foreboding brow, What time thy bosom scorned its dearest vow! Sad, though I wept the friend, the lover changed, Still thy cold look was scornful and estranged, Till from thy pity, love, and shelter thrown, I wandered hopeless, friendless, and alone! “Oh! righteous Heaven! ’twas then my tortured soul First gave to wrath unlimited control! Adieu the silent look! the streaming eye! The murmured plaint! the deep heart-heaving sigh Long-slumbering Vengeance wakes to better deeds; He shrieks, he falls, the perjured lover bleeds! Now the last laugh of agony is o’er, And pale in blood he sleeps, to wake no more! “’Tis done! the flame of hate no longer burns Nature relents, but, ah! too late returns! Why does my soul this gush of fondness feel? Trembling and faint, I drop the guilty steel! Cold on my heart the hand of terror lies, And shades of horror close my languid eyes!