Page:Elegiac Sonnets 1.pdf/104

---

---

    But absent from the calm abode,
    Dark thunder gathers round his road;
Wild raves the wind, the arrowy lightnings flash,
Returning quick the murmuring rocks among,
His faint heart trembling as he winds along;
Alarm'd—he listens to the crash

    Of rifted ice!—Oh, man of woe!
    O'er his dear cot—a mass of snow,
By the storm sever'd from the cliff above,
Has fallen—and buried in its marble breast,
All that for him—lost wretch!—the world possest,
His home, his happiness, his love!

    Aghast the heart-struck mourner stands,
    Glazed are his eyes—convulsed his hands,
O'erwhelming anguish checks his labouring breath;
Crush'd by despair's intolerable weight,
Frantic he seeks the mountain's giddiest height,
And headlong seeks relief in death!