and sigh,
Stand ranged in state
On thee to fly,
Blithely let us look and cheerily
On death that grins so drearily!
What would grief with us, or anguish?
They are foes that we know how to vanquish.
I press thine answering fingers,
Thy look upon me lingers,
Or the fringe of thy garment will waft me
a kiss:
Thou rollest on in light;
I fall back into night;
Even despair is bliss.

From this delight,
From this wild revel's surge
Perchance there may emerge
Foul jealousy, and scorn, and envious spite.
But this is our glory and pride;
When thee I despise,
I turn but my eyes,
And the fair one beside thee will welcome
my gaze,
And she is my bride!
O happy, happy maze!
Or shall it be her neighbour?
Whose eyes, like a sabre,
Flash and pierce,
Their glance is so fierce.

Thus jumping and prancing,
All together go dancing
Adown life's giddy cave;
Nor living, nor loving,
But dizzily roving
Through dreams to a grave.
There below 'tis yet worse:
Earth's flowers and its clay
Roof a gloomier day,
Hide a still deeper curse.
Ring then, ye cymbals, enliven this dream!
Ye horns shout a fiercer, more vulture-like scream!
And frisk caper skip prance dance yourselves
out of breath!
For your life is all art,
Love has given you no heart:
So hurrah till you plunge into bottomless
death.

He had ended, and was standing by the window. Then she came into the
opposite chamber, lovely, as he had never yet seen her: her brown hair
floated freely, and played in wanton ringlets about the whitest of
necks; she was but lightly clad, and seemed as if she meant to finish
some little household matters at this late hour of the night before
she went to bed: for she placed two candles in two corners of the
room, set the green cloth on the table to rights, and withdrew again.

Emilius was still sunk in his sweet dreams, and gazing on the image
which his beloved had left in his mind, when to his horrour the
frightful, the scarlet old woman walkt through the chamber: the gold
on her head and breast glared ghastlily as it threw back the light.

She had vanisht again. Was he to believe his eyes? Was it not some
delusive phantom of the night that his own feverish imagination had
conjured up before him?

But no! she returned, still more hideous than before, with a long grey
and black mane flying wildly and haggardly about her breast and back.
T