Complete Works of Bram Stoker (489 page)

‘Twas some relief, our foe a grave.

His death sits lightly; but her fate

Has made me - what thou well mayest hate.

His doom was sealed - he knew it well

Warned by the voice of stern Taheer,

Deep in whose darkly boding ear

The deathshot pealed of murder near,

As filed the troop to where they fell!

He died too in the battle broil,

A time that heeds nor pain nor toil;

One cry to Mahomet for aid,

One prayer to Allah all he made:

He knew and crossed me in the fray -

I gazed upon him where he lay,

And watched his spirit ebb away:

Though pierced like pard by hunters’ steel,

He felt not half that now I feel.

I searched, but vainly searched, to find

The workings of a wounded mind;

Each feature of that sullen corse

Betrayed his rage, but no remorse.

Oh, what had vengeance given to trace

Despair upon his dying face I

The late repentance of that hour,

When penitence hath lost her power

To tear one terror from the grave,

And will not soothe, and cannot save.

‘The cold in clime are cold in blood,

Their love can scarce deserve the name;

But mine was like a lava flood

That boils in Etna’s breast of flame.

I cannot prate in puling strain

Of ladye-love, and beauty’s chain:

If changing cheek, and searching vein,

Lips taught to writhe, but not complain,

If bursting heart, and maddening brain,

And daring deed, and vengeful steel,

And all that I have felt, and feel,

Betoken love - that love was mine,

And shown by many a bitter sign.

‘Tis true, I could not whine nor sigh,

I knew but to obtain or die.

I die - but first I have possessed,

And come what may, I have been blessed.

Shall I the doom I sought upbraid?

No - reft of all, yet undismayed

But for the thought of Leila slain,

Give me the pleasure with the pain,

So would I live and love again.

I grieve, but not, my holy guide!

For him who dies, but her who died:

She sleeps beneath the wandering wave

Ah! had she but an earthly grave,

This breaking heart and throbbing head

Should seek and share her narrow bed.

She was a form of life and light,

That, seen, became a part of sight;

And rose, where’er I turned mine eye,

The morning-star of memory!

‘Yes, love indeed is light from heaven..

A spark of that immortal fire

With angels shared, by Allah given,

To lift from earth our low desire.

Devotion wafts the mind above,

But Heaven itself descends in love;

A feeling from the Godhead caught,

To wean from self each sordid thought;

A ray of him who formed the whole;

A glory circling round the soul !

I grant my love imperfect, all

That mortals by the name miscall;

Then deem it evil, what thou wilt;

But say, oh say, hers was not guilt !

She was my life’s unerring light:

That quenched, what beam shall break my night?

Oh! would it shone to lead me still,

Although to death or deadliest ill!

Why marvel ye, if they who lose

This present joy, this future hope,

No more with sorrow meekly cope;

In phrensy then their fate accuse;

In madness do those fearful deeds

That seem to add but guilt to woe?

Alas! the breast that inly bleeds

Hath nought to dread from outward blow;

Who falls from all he knows of bliss,

Cares little into what abyss.

Fierce as the gloomy vulture’s now

To thee, old man, my deeds appear:

I read abhorrence on thy brow,

And this too was I born to bear!

‘Tis true, that, like that bird of prey,

With havock have I marked my way:

But this was taught me by the dove,

To die - and know no second love.

This lesson yet hath man to learn,

Taught by the thing he dares to spurn:

The bird that sings within the brake,

The swan that swims upon the lake,

One mate, and one alone, will take.

And let the fool still prone to range,

And sneer on all who cannot change,

Partake his jest with boasting boys;

I envy not his varied joys,

But deem such feeble, heartless man,

Less than yon solitary swan;

Far, far beneath the shallow maid

He left believing and betrayed.

Such shame at least was never mine -

Leila! each thought was only thine!

My good, my guilt, my weal, my woe,

My hope on high - my all below.

Earth holds no other like to thee,

Or, if it doth, in vain for me:

For worlds I dare not view the dame

Resembling thee, yet not the same.

The very crimes that mar my youth,

This bed of death - attest my truth!

‘Tis all too late - thou wert, thou art

The cherished madness of my heart!

‘And she was lost - and yet I breathed,

But not the breath of human life:

A serpent round my heart was wreathed,

And stung my every thought to strife.

Alike all time, abhorred all place,

Shuddering I shrunk from Nature’s face,

Where every hue that charmed before

The blackness of my bosom wore.

The rest thou dost already know,

And all my sins, and half my woe.

But talk no more of penitence;

Thou see’st I soon shall part from hence:

And if thy holy tale were true,

The deed that’s done canst thou undo?

Think me not thankless - but this grief

Looks not to priesthood for relief.

My soul’s estate in secret guess:

But wouldst thou pity more, say less.

When thou canst bid my Leila live,

Then will I sue thee to forgive;

Then plead my cause in that high place

Where purchased masses proffer grace.

Go, when the hunter’s hand hath wrung

From forest-cave her shrieking young,

And calm the lonely lioness:

But soothe not - mock not my distress!

‘In earlier days, and calmer hours,

When heart with heart delights to blend,

Where bloom my native valley’s bowers

I had - Ah! have I now? - a friend!

To him this pledge I charge thee send,

Memorial of a youthful vow;

I would remind him of my end:

Though souls absorbed like mine allow

Brief thought to distant friendship’s claim,

Yet dear to him my blighted name.

‘Tis strange - he prophesied my doom,

And I have smiled - I then could smile -

When prudence would his voice assume,

And warn - I recked not what - the while:

But now remembrance whispers o’er

Those accents scarcely marked before.

Say - that his bodings came to pass,

And he will start to hear their truth,

And wish his words had not been sooth:

Tell him, unheeding as I was,

Through many a busy bitter scene

Of all our golden youth had been,

In pain, my faltering tongue had tried

To bless his memory ere I died;

But Heaven in wrath would turn away,

If guilt should for the guiltless pray.

I do not ask him not to blame,

Too gentle he to wound my name;

And what have I to do with fame?

I do not ask him not to mourn,

Such cold request might sound like scorn;

And what than friendship’s manly tear

May better grace a brother’s bier?

But bear this ring, his own of old,

And tell him - what thou dost behold!

The withered frame, the ruined mind,

The wrack by passion left behind,

A shrivelled scroll, a scattered leaf,

Seared by the autumn blast of grief!

‘Tell me no more of fancy’s gleam,

No, father, no, ‘twas not a dream;

Alas! the dreamer first must sleep.

I only watched, and wished to weep;

But could not, for my burning brow

Throbbed to the very brain as now:

I wished but for a single tear,

As something welcome, new, and dear-;

I wished it then, I wish it still;

Despair is stronger than my will.

Waste not thine orison, despair

Is mightier than thy pious prayer:

I would not if I might, be blest;

I want no paradise, but rest.

‘Twas then, I tell thee, father! then

I saw her; yes, she lived again;

And shining in her white symar,

As through yon pale grey cloud the star

Which now I gaze on, as on her,

Who looked and looks far lovelier;

Dimly I view its trembling spark;

Tomorrow’s night shall be more dark;

And I, before its rays appear,

That lifeless thing the living fear.

I wander, father! for my soul

Is fleeting towards the final goal.

I saw her, friar! and I rose

Forgetful of our former woes;

And rushing from my couch, I dart,

And clasp her to my desperate heart;

I clasp - what is it that I clasp?

No breathing form within my grasp,

No heart that beats reply to mine,

Yet, Leila! yet the form is thine!

And art thou, dearest, changed so much,

As meet my eye, yet mock my touch?

Ah! were thy beauties e’er so cold,

I care not; so my arms enfold

The all they ever wished to hold.

Alas! around a shadow prest,

They shrink upon my lonely breast;

Yet still ‘tis there! In silence stands,

And beckons with beseeching hands!

With braided hair, and bright black eye -

I knew ‘twas false - she could not die!

But he is dead! within the dell

I saw him buried where he fell;

He comes not, for he cannot break

From earth; why then art thou awake?

They told me wild waves rolled above

The face I view, the form I love;

They told me - ‘twas a hideous tale I

I’d tell it, but my tongue would fail:

If true, and from thine ocean-cave

Thou com’st to claim a calmer grave;

Oh! pass thy dewy fingers o’er

This brow that then will burn no more;

Or place them on my hopeless heart:

But, shape or shade! whate’er thou art,

In mercy ne’er again depart!

Or farther with thee bear my soul

Than winds can waft or waters roll!

‘Such is my name, and such my tale.

Confessor ! to thy secret ear

I breathe the sorrows I bewail,

And thank thee for the generous tear

This glazing eye could never shed.

Then lay me with the humblest dead,

And, save the cross above my head,

Be neither name nor emblem spread,

By prying stranger to be read,

Or stay the passing pilgrims tread.’

He passed - nor of his name and race

Hath left a token or a trace,

Save what the father must not say

Who shrived him on his dying day:

This broken tale was all we knew

Of her he loved, or him he slew.

THE VAMPYRE by Henry Colburn

This 1819 short story was first published by Henry Colburn in the
New Monthly Magazine
with the false attribution “A Tale by Lord Byron”. The story was an immediate success, partly because of the Byron attribution and partly because it exploited gothic horror themes that were so popular at the time. The story is now believed to be the first work to depict what would become the gothic prototype of a vampire.

THE VAMPYRE

A Tale

INTRODUCTION.

THE superstition upon which this tale is founded is very general in the East. Among the Arabians it appears to be common: it did not, however, extend itself to the Greeks until after the establishment of Christianity; and it has only assumed its present form since the division of the Latin and Greek churches; at which time, the idea becoming prevalent, that a Latin body could not corrupt if buried in their territory, it gradually increased, and formed the subject of many wonderful stories, still extant, of the dead rising from their graves, and feeding upon the blood of the young and beautiful. In the West it spread, with some slight variation, all over Hungary, Poland, Austria, and Lorraine, where the belief existed, that vampyres nightly imbibed a certain portion of the blood of their victims, who became emaciated, lost their strength, and speedily died of consumptions; whilst these human blood-suckers fattened  —  and their veins became distended to such a state of repletion, as to cause the blood to flow from all the passages of their bodies, and even from the very pores of their skins.

In the London Journal, of March, 1732, is a curious, and, of course, credible account of a particular case of vampyrism, which is stated to have occurred at Madreyga, in Hungary. It appears, that upon an examination of the commander-in-chief and magistrates of the place, they positively and unanimously affirmed, that, about five years before, a certain Heyduke, named Arnold Paul, had been heard to say, that, at Cassovia, on the frontiers of the Turkish Servia, he had been tormented by a vampyre, but had found a way to rid himself of the evil, by eating some of the earth out of the vampyre’s grave, and rubbing himself with his blood. This precaution, however, did not prevent him from becoming a vampyre himself; for, about twenty or thirty days after his death and burial, many persons complained of having been tormented by him, and a deposition was made, that four persons had been deprived of life by his attacks. To prevent further mischief, the inhabitants having consulted their Hadagni, took up tho body, and found it (as is supposed to be usual in cases of vampyrism) fresh, and entirely free from corruption, and emitting at the mouth, nose, and ears, pure and florid blood. Proof having been thus obtained, they resorted to the accustomed remedy. A stake was driven entirely through the heart and body of Arnold Paul, at which he is reported to have cried out as dreadfully as if he had been alive. This done, they cut off his head, burned his body, and threw the ashes into his grave. The same measures were adopted with the corses of those persons who had previously died from vampyrism, lest they should, in their turn, become agents upon others who survived them.