Poetry.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VIII, Issue 2337, 3 July 1886, Page 1 (Supplement)

Poetry.

LEOXORE: A LADY OF DIPSOMANIA.

By Saudin (W. Stewart Ross). (In the Rationalist), The gnats danced in the evening air, The sunbeams smote the radiant hair Of maiden Leonoro; The burn sung low its babbling rhyme To heath and fern and mountain thyme, And hawthorns green aud hoar.

"[was done; I had her plighted word, It clove my spirit like a sword—

Too true my cursed aim. I'd won the gold of purse and curl, I'd won the valley's noblest girl, For ruin, waut and shame I

The fiend was in my every vein, The quenchless lire of thirst, insane,

The worm that never dies: . Remorse within me raged like hell, Andyet I did'notdurp to toll Her of the holy eyes.

Hateful and foul tho song ho singShe gave iite gold, I bought a ring; We're one for evermore ! Her friends disowned the girl forthwith, And 'me, the drunken tramp, John Smith, the Lord of Leonore.

Garments grew bare, and food giew

scant, And sallow-cheeked and dull-eyed want Expelled us from our stye; And, weeping o'er my wasted life, My deadly pale and squalid wife Went to. the streets to die.

I yelled for drink-no drink was there; I clutched the lady by her hair ' And dragged her to her,knee; Arrayed in rags and hunger-bitten, A h.ly still,/and fever-Stricken, And all for wretched me?

•' Drink! give me drink 1!" I .shrieked ' and swore; •' Give think, lean, haggard Leonore," She took the shining shears, And down Ivr glorious tresses fell, Al For drunken-rue to clutch and sell, ▼ Wet' with her Imrmng tears. I Fold and drink the severed hair, While her young head, hatless and hare, Went out into the win Next eve upon the workhouse bed The wife I'd killed lay pale and dead, And madness burned ray brain, Fierce and more fieice the demon di'itVß The wild March winds across her grave Her:red, rough, pauper tomb. 'Twas cldricl) night, and angry stars Glared madly on the thunder scars Seen through the mountain's gloom. The moon splashed down a bloody rain Tint hammered on my blazing brain, J) And smote it evermore; 9 Earth shudders, and the heaven's reel And every rolling thunder poal Crashed out the name Leonore. "Tho ring, the ring!" I clutched a spade, I reached the. <mound where she was laid I dug wi'h might and main; I tore the ring oil'with my teeth And the white; skin, her finger-sheath, Then clutched my bursting brain, I pawned ami drank tho bridal ring j But like a wild hell-Masted thing, It gleams before my sight; It glares rid in the light of day, Anon its baneful demon-ray Makes hideous the night. I fillad not up the yawning tomb, I left it open in the gloom, And fled in mad alarm : Next day I saw a prowling bitch, With ears erect and tail a-iwitch, jg Crunch at a human arm. Then my brain hurst, 0 God, no more, The brown birth-mark—My Leonora The broken arm was thine! I shrieked, and wii.h a fiendish ban, I rushed out from the world of man To eat the husks with swino. " Blue-devils and insane," they said, And men for ma a jacket made And built a padded room; It holds me not,- nor earth nor air, For, gods and demons, I am there ! There by that open tomb. T drink the hair, I drink the ring; The aim is there, unhallowed thing—- ' Twill leave me never-more. You flhr> are sane, in mercy tell When I shall roach my home in hell, Ur meet my Leonore 1