supposed
poison--and probably died of starvation! She was found dead soon after.
Lord Byron never adverted to this subject without a thrill of horror.
The following from his private journal may, perhaps, have some
connection with it:--

"I awoke from a dream--well! and have not others dreamed?--such a
dream! I wish the dead would rest forever. Ugh! how my blood
chilled--and I could not wake--and--and--

"Shadows to-night
Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard
Than could the substance of ten thousand--
Armed all in proof--

"I do not like this dream--I hate its foregone conclusion. And am I to
be shaken by shadows? Ay, when they remind us of--no matter--but if I
dream again I will try whether all sleep has the like
visions."--Moore's "Byron," page 324.

She came to me last night--
The floor gave back no tread,
She stood by me in the wan moonlight--
In the white robes of the dead--
Pale--pale, and very mournfully
She bent her light form over me--
I heard no sound--I felt no breath
Breathe o'er me from that face of death;
Its dark eyes rested on my own,
Rayless and cold as eyes of stone;
Yet in their fixed, unchanging gaze,
Something which told of other days--
A sadness in their quiet glare,
As if Love's smile were frozen there,
Came o'er me with an icy thrill--
O God! I feel its presence still!
And fearfully and dimly
The pale cold vision passed,
Yet those dark eyes were fixed on me
In sadness to the last.
I struggled--and my breath came back,
As to the victim on the rack,
Amid the pause of mortal pain
Life steals to suffer once again!
Was it a dream? I looked around,
The moonlight through the lattice shone;
The same pale glow that dimly crowned
The forehead of the spectral one!
And then I knew she had been there--
Not in her breathing loveliness,
But as the grave's lone sleepers are,
Silent and cold and passionless!
A weary thought--a fearful thought--
Within the secret heart to keep:
Would that the past might be forgot--
Would that the dead might sleep!

These are the concluding lines of a long poem written in 1829, while he
was editing the "American Manufacturer." The poem as a whole was never
in print; but these lines of it I find in the "Essex Gazette" of August
22, 1829, from which paper they we