Hark to the winds! which through the wide saloon
And the long passage send a dismal tune,
Music that ghosts delight in--and now heed
Yon beauteous nymph, who must unmask the deed.
See! with majestic sweep she swims alone
Through rooms, all dreary, guided by a groan,
Though windows rattle and though tap'stries shake
And the feet falter every step they take.
Mid groans and gibing sprites she silent goes
To find a something which will soon expose
The villainies and wiles of her determined foes,
And having thus adventured, thus endured,
Fame, wealth, and lover, are for life secured."[109]
Crabbe's Ellen Orford in _The Borough_ (1810) is drawn from life,
and in grim and bitter irony is intended as a contrast to these
timorous and triumphant creatures
"borrowed and again conveyed,
From book to book, the shadows of a shade."
Ellen's adventures are sordid and gloomy, without a hint of the
picturesque, her distresses horrible actualities, not the
"air-drawn" fancies that torture the sensitive Angelinas of
Gothic fiction:
"But not like them has she been laid
In ruined castle sore dismayed,
Where naughty man and ghostly sprite
Fill'd her pure mind with awe and dread,
Stalked round the room, put out the light
And shook the curtains round the bed.
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