Chapter XXVI

But one glance more—one wilder’d sight,
And I closed my eye on all delight:
One hasty glance—and I never knew
Whence was the music that thrill’d me through;
My ear but caught one fading strain,
And then it was seal’d: but it rung again
With a deathlike, piercing, frosty pain:
And o’er each limb did numbness creep,
As steals o’er the muscles the prickly sleep:
And death came on me: my breath but press’d
In a struggling gasp, from half my breast;
And a falling, falling, falling feeling,
And dark oblivion o’er me stealing,
And a hand that press’d me down, below
The deepest depth of some ocean’s flow,
And a struggle long, and a struggle dread,
And a frantic wrench to raise my head,
And a throttled gasp, and a quenching breath,
And a struggle—is all I know of death.