"But if I succeed, then, oh! fair Geraldine! Thy promise with rapture, I claim, And thou, queen of Fairies, shalt ever be mine The bride of my bed; and thy portrait divine Shall fill all the earth with my fame."
He spake; when, behold the fair Geraldine's form On the canvass enchantingly glow'd; His touches, they flew like the leaves in a storm; And the pure, pearly white, and the carnation warm, Contending in harmony, flow'd.
And now did the portrait a twin-sister seem To the figure of Geraldine fair: With the same sweet expression did faithfully teem Each muscle, each feature; in short, not a gleam Was lost of her beautiful hair.
'Twas the Fairy herself! but, alas! her blue eyes Still a pupil did ruefully lack; And who shall describe the terrifick surprise That seized the Paint-King, when, behold, he descries Not a speck on his palette of black.
"I am lost!" said the fiend, and he shook like a leaf; When, casting his eyes to the ground, He saw the lost pupils of Ellen with grief In the jaws of a mouse, and the sly little thief Whisk away from his sight with a bound.
"I am lost!" said the fiend, and he fell like a stone: Then rising the Fairy in ire, With a touch of her finger she loosen'd her zone, (While the limbs on the wall gave a terrible groan!) And she swell'd to a column of fire.
Her spear now a thunder-bolt flash'd in the air, And sulphur the vault fill'd around: She smote the grim monster; and now by the hair High lifting, she hurl'd him in speechless despair Down the depths of the chasm profound.
Then waving, with smiles, o'er the picture her spear, "Come forth!" said the good Geraldine; When, behold, from the canvass fair Ellen appear! In feature, in person more lovely than e'er, With grace more than ever divine!
_Mo. Anthology_, VII-391, Dec. 1809, Boston.
[Washington Allston, _idem_. Cf. pp. 18, 19.]
[Footnote 47: This being a _free country_, I have taken the liberty, for the sake of the metre, to alter the word prismatick, as above!]
THE SQUEAKING GHOST. A tale imitated from the German.
_Boston Mirror_, II-96, Jan. 6, 1810, Boston.
[Also in _Charms of Lit. in Prose and Verse_, p. 350, 1808, Trenton.]
_Something_, I-151, Jan. 20, 1810, Boston.
[Also in _Mo. Anthology_, VII-391, Dec. 1809, Boston.]