[294] towards the glass. But my courage failed me; my hand shook, and some moments elapsed before I could sufficiently quiet my nerves to lift the glass containing the fatal liquid. The blood ran cold upon my heart, and my brain reeled, as again and again I lifted the poison to my closed lips. “It must be done,” thought I, “ I must drink it.” With a desperate effort I unlocked my clenched teeth and the deed was done! “O God, have mercy upon me!” I murmured, as the empty glass fell from my hand. I threw myself upon the bed, and awaited the awful termination. An age of unutterable misery seemed crowded into a brief moment. All the events of my past life, a life, as it then seemed to me, made up of folly and crime, rose distinct before me, like accusing witnesses, as if the recording angel had unrolled to my view the full and black catalogue of my unnumbered sins:—O'er the soulI felt that what I had done was beyond recall; and the Phantom of Death, as it drew nearer, wore an aspect darker and more terrible. I thought of the coffin, the shroud, and the still and narrow grave, into whose dumb and frozen solitude none but the gnawing worm intrudes. And then my thoughts wandered away into the vagueness and mystery of eternity. I was rushing uncalled for into the presence of a just and pure God, with a spirit unrepenting, unannealed! And I tried to
Winters of memory seemed to roll,
And gather, in that drop of time,
A life of pain, an age of crime.
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Boston and New York, Houghton, Mifflin and company, 1888-89.
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