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Beneath it like successive billows borne
Crimes and calamities sweep into light,
Each direr than the first!———Ha, speak I now
Ænigmas? Bear ye witness to the truth
With which I follow, hound-like, on the track
Of the evil deeds committed long ago.———
There is a choir that never leaves this roof,
Symphonious, not euphonious; for its notes
Are not of good. A troop of wassailers,
Drunk and made bold with draughts of human blood,
A troop of Sister Furies, haunts this house,
Hard, hard to be dislodged. To the doom'd walls
Close-clinging, loud they sing the primal wrong;
Then loathingly repeat the name of him
Who trampled on a brother's marriage-bed.
Miss I the mark; or do my words strike home?
Wilt call me now "Impostor, vagabond,
"Wretched deceiver"?—On thine oath attest
My knowledge of this house's ancient crimes!
Crimes and calamities sweep into light,
Each direr than the first!———Ha, speak I now
Ænigmas? Bear ye witness to the truth
With which I follow, hound-like, on the track
Of the evil deeds committed long ago.———
There is a choir that never leaves this roof,
Symphonious, not euphonious; for its notes
Are not of good. A troop of wassailers,
Drunk and made bold with draughts of human blood,
A troop of Sister Furies, haunts this house,
Hard, hard to be dislodged. To the doom'd walls
Close-clinging, loud they sing the primal wrong;
Then loathingly repeat the name of him
Who trampled on a brother's marriage-bed.
Miss I the mark; or do my words strike home?
Wilt call me now "Impostor, vagabond,
"Wretched deceiver"?—On thine oath attest
My knowledge of this house's ancient crimes!
CHORUS.
An oath, if plighted in a proper spirit,
Is a most solemn tie twixt man and man.
Oaths are uncall'd for here. I marvel at thee,
That thou, a damsel from far-distant climes,
Like an eye-witness speakest of the deeds
With which this land was stain'd in days gone by.
An oath, if plighted in a proper spirit,
Is a most solemn tie twixt man and man.
Oaths are uncall'd for here. I marvel at thee,
That thou, a damsel from far-distant climes,
Like an eye-witness speakest of the deeds
With which this land was stain'd in days gone by.