d for a darker fate!
My very guards 'neath my stern glance quailed,
And with their cloaks their faces veiled
As they passed the fast-barred grate.

'I LOVED! Thou know'st not half the power
Of woman's love-lit eye;
Her voice can soothe death's gloomy hour,
Her smiles dispel the clouds which lower
When Affliction's sea rolls high.

'My heart seemed cold as the frozen snow
Which binds dark AEtna's form,
But _Love_ raged there with the lava's flow,
And madden'd my soul with the scorching glow
Of strong passion's thunder-storm.'

'I told my love: O GOD! even still
I hear the Tempter's voice,
Which whispered the thought in my mind, to fill
My page of crime with a deed of ill
That made all hell rejoice.

'I knelt at her feet, and my proud heart burn'd
When she spoke of my brother's love;
Affection's warmth to deep hate was turn'd;
His proffered hand in my wrath I spurn'd--
Not all his prayers could move.

'At dead of night to his room I crept,
As noiseless as the grave;
Disturbed in his dreams, my brother wept,
And softly murmur'd _her_ name while he slept;
_That_ word new fury gave!

'The sound from his lip had scarcely passed,
When my dagger pierced his heart:
One dying look on me he cast--
That awful look in my soul will last
When body and soul shall part!

'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;