How he arrives there none can clearly know;Athwart the mountains and immense wild tracts, Or flung a waif upon that vast sea-flow, Or down the river's boiling cataracts:
To reach it is as dying fever-stricken 5To leave it, slow faint birth intense pangs quicken;And memory swoons in both the tragic acts.
But being there one feels a citizen;
Escape seems hopeless to the heart forlorn:
Can Death-in-Life be brought to life again? 10And yet release does come; there comes a morn When he awakes from slumbering so sweetly That all the world is changed for him completely, And he is verily as if new-born.
He scarcely can believe the blissful change,15He weeps perchance who wept not while accurst;Never again will he approach the range Infected by that evil spell now burst:
Poor wretch! who once hath paced that dolent city Shall pace it often, doomed beyond all pity,20With horror ever deepening from the first.
Though he possess sweet babes and loving wife, A home of peace by loyal friendships cheered, And love them more than death or happy life, They shall avail not; he must dree his weird; 25Renounce all blessings for that imprecation, Steal forth and haunt that builded desolation, Of woe and terrors and thick darkness reared.
