nd noxious vapours steeped;
And loudly through the gloomy stillness went
The oozy plashes from the roof that dripped,
Marking the minutes as they slid away,
With slimy tokens of the frame's decay.

LII.

The rank air slumber'd deep on midnight wings,
Dead as the dead that fester'd 'neath its shade,
Hush'd from those low and fearful whisperings,
That make the living pallid and afraid,
Till nigh amid its awful shadowings,
The cerements silver'd round the hapless maid,
As might a lucent gem with radiance glow,
Caught from the brightness of the soul below.

LIII.

Soh! 'tis a sigh--low drawn and very faint,
A spirit stirring 'mid the slumb'ring dead,
Bodiless, homeless, breathing forth its plaint,
Nor yet from life and its sad memories fled.
Soh! it comes swooning through the air so taint
Acute and clear as ever arrow sped;
Ah! miserere for the hapless soul,
That from the shores of death thus wafts its dole.

LIV.

Soh! the soft raising of a white clad arm--
Are holy angels bearing her away?
Ave Maria! shield thy child from harm,
And guard her from this mansion of decay!
Soh! how the lady trembles with alarm,
How wildly round the cave her glances stray,
Until amid the torpid gloom they die
Of space deep darken'd to immensity.

LV.

With frenzied strength from off her naked feet,
She tore the linen fetters they had bound,
And mantled closely in white winding sheet,
The maiden slid upon the icy ground;
With tottering steps that terror rendered fleet,
And trembling hands she traced the vault around,
Stumbling o'er rotten shells whose prison'd bones
Rattled beneath her touch with hollow groans.

LVI.

Her palm grew clammy with the slimy ooze
That fester'd on the walls in sick'ning streams,
As on the pallid brow Death's icy dews
Gather, the presage of corruption's seams;
Pale horror every sound and motion glues,
So corpse-like all around the dungeon seems;
But on--and a low portal met her hand,
By iron staunchions in quaint tracings spann'd.

LVII.

And so escaping from her death-like swoon,
Forth sped she to the clear and healthful air,
Fearing her shadow which the orbed moon
Flung darkly on the moss-enwoven stair;
And her white feet, used to the silken shoon,
Chilled 'neath the stone so comfortless and bare,
Falling unechoed as she sped away,
Wing'd with the strength o