Thou'st crowned me with they love and bade me wear it,
I kiss the shrine.
I will not give thee up, nay, here I swear it,
That thou art mine.
* * * * * * * * * *
A desecrated holiness is o'er me,
I've held the Thyrsus cup;
I've dared the thunderbolts of Heaven for thee,
I will not give up.
SANSON.

World, farewell!
And thou pale tape light, by whose fast-dying flame I write
these words--the last my hand shall pen--farewell! What is't to
die? To be shut in a dungeon's walls and starved to death? She
knows, and soon will I. She sought to learn of me, and I to teach
to her, the mystery of life. Ha, ha! Who claimed her by the
church's law has given us both to learn the mystery of death.
What was't I loved? The eyes that thrilled me through and through
with their magnetic subtlety? They're there, set on my face; but
where's their lifened light? What was't I loved? The mouth whose
coral redness I have buried in my own? 'Tis there, shrunk 'gainst
two rows of dead pale pearls, and cold and colorless as lip of
statue carved of marble. Was it the form whose perfect outline
stamped it with divinity? It's there, but 'reft of all its
winsome roundness, and stiffening in the chill of death. It makes
me cold to look upon its rigidness. But just this hour the breath
went out; was't that I loved? 'Twas this I clasped and kissed.
What is it that we've christened love, that glamours men to
madness, and stains with falsehood virgin purity? It made this