She is,
however, mortally wounded, and Axel finds her dying upon the
battlefield.
"Yea, it was she; with smothered pain
She whispers with a voice full faint:
'Good-evening, Axel, nay, good-night,
For death is nestling at my heart.
Oh! ask not what hath brought me hither;
'Twas love alone led me astray.
Alas! the last long night is dusking;
I stand before the grave's dread door.
How different life, with all its small distresses,
Seems now from what it seemed of yore!
And only love--love fair as ours,
Can I take with me to the skies.'"[32]
[32] The original is in the rhymed Byronic metre, mostly in
couplets. In order not to sacrifice anything of the meaning I have
chosen to put it into blank verse.
This is exactly the Byronic note, which would be still more audible, if
I had preserved the rhymed couplets. Even Medora's male attire is
borrowed by Maria, and much more of this Byronic melodramatic heroism is
there, only a little more conventionally draped and with larger
concessions to the Philistine sense of propriety.
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