An impious oath confirmed the threat, - This outcry, on the heart of Peter, Was something Peter did not like. Whether to cheer his coward breast, Among the rocks and winding crags; What is there now in Peter's heart? Or whence the might of this strange sound? From Peter's hand the sapling dropped! Threat has he none to execute; "If any one should come and see That I am here, they 'll think," quoth he, "I'm helping this poor dying brute.” He scans the Ass from limb to limb, His scorn returns, his hate revives; With malice that again takes flight; For in the pool a startling sight Meets him, among the inverted trees. Is it the moon's distorted face? A grisly idol hewn in stone? Is it a fiend that to a stake Of fire his desperate self is tethering? Or stubborn spirit doomed to yell Ten thousand miles from all his brethren? Never did pulse so quickly throb, Ah, well-a-day for Peter Bell! His hat is up, and every hair He looks, he ponders, looks again; hears a groan; his heart will break; He gives a loud and frightful shriek, And back he falls, as if his life were flown! PART SECOND. WE left our Hero in a trance, Beneath the alders, near the river ; The Ass is by the river-side, And, where the feeble breezes glide, A happy respite ! but at length* He lifts his head, he sees his staff; He touches, 't is to him a treasure! That he is yet where mortals dwell, A thought received with languid pleasure! His head upon his elbow propped, And then His wandering eye is fixed. Thought he, that is the face of one Now, like a tempest-shattered bark, And in a moment to the verge His staring bones all shake with joy, Such life is in the Ass's eyes, That Peter Bell, if he had been Must now have thrown aside his fears. The Ass looks on, and to his work He touches here, he touches there, And now among the dead man's hair His sapling Peter has entwined. He pulls and looks and pulls again And he whom the poor Ass had lost, The man who had been four days dead, Head-foremost from the river's bed Uprises like a ghost! And Peter draws him to dry land; |