Last few days' disturbed occurrence:
Roderigo's stay in prison,
Satanella's cruel judgment,
Pestilence that every moment
Claims new victims on the island;
All this in his mind was seething
As volcanoes' boiling lava,
As the young wine's effervescence.
Long he sat, then filled the goblet,
Drank and fell to further musing.
Till at length the moon's white roundness
Poured its flood of streaming brightness
'cross front wall of refectory,
Where from floor to ceiling reaching
Stood a hearth . . . work queerly fashioned,
As if led by moon's carresses
Grand-master his bald-pate raises
To observe the moonbeams' dancing
O'er the hearth, along its cornice,
Over queerly fashioned flowers,
O'er the arabesques entwining,
And the statues bulging cluster.
Seems the longer he was gazing
He beheld new forms and features
That passed formerly unnoticed.
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