Page:Poems - Southey (1799) volume 2.djvu/25

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And pointed, that her eye might contemplateAt leisure the drear scene.He dragged her onThro' a low iron door, down broken stairs;Then a cold horror thro' the Maiden's frameCrept, for she stood amid a vault, and saw,By the sepulchral lamp's dim glaring light,The fragments of the dead."Look here!" he cried,"Damsel, look here! survey this house of Death;O soon to tenant it! soon to increaseThese trophies of mortality! for henceIs no return. Gaze here! behold this skull,These eyeless sockets, and these unflesh'd jaws,That with their ghastly grinning, seem to mockThy perishable charms; for thus thy cheekMust moulder. Child of Grief! shrinks not thy soul,Viewing these horrors? trembles not thy heartAt the dread thought, that here its life's-blood soonShall stagnate, and the finely-fibred frame,
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