Alas!
the last agony had seized her. The rainbow-hued forests had all
melted away, and Animula lay struggling feebly in what seemed to be
a spot of dim light. Ah! the sight was horrible: the limbs once so
round and lovely shrivelling up into nothings; the eyes--those eyes
that shone like heaven--being quenched into black dust; the lustrous
golden hair now lank and discolored. The last throe came. I beheld
that final struggle of the blackening form--and I fainted.
When I awoke out of a trance of many hours, I found myself lying amid
the wreck of my instrument, myself as shattered in mind and body as
it. I crawled feebly to my bed, from which I did not rise for months.
They say now that I am mad; but they are mistaken. I am poor, for I
have neither the heart nor the will to work; all my money is spent,
and I live on charity. Young men's associations that love a joke
invite me to lecture on Optics before them, for which they pay me,
and laugh at me while I lecture. "Linley, the mad microscopist," is
the name I go by. I suppose that I talk incoherently while I lecture.
Who could talk sense when his brain is haunted by such ghastly
memories, while ever and anon among the shapes of death I behold the
radiant form of my lost Animula!
THE SCULPTOR'S FUNERAL.
Amid the aisle, apart, there stood
A mourner like the rest;
And while the solemn rites were said,
He fashioned into verse his mood,
That would not be repressed.
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