Fowle's New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

Parnassian Spring
A Picture of Suicide.

Ah! see beneath yon Abbey-wall,
Where thick the mantling ivy grows,
Crown'd by wide yew and cypress tall,
Which shade the stream that mournful flows.
There, prone on the bare, joyless bank,
A sullen spectre lifeless lies:
Nor heeds bleak winds nor vapours dank,
But earth, and air, and heav'n defies.
In tatter'd garb the fiend appears,
With felon cordage firmly bound:
And in the bandage vile he wears
Pistols and the sheathless blades hung round.
One wither'd hand a cup sustains,
Drugg'd to the brim with liquid fire,
That spreads like lightning thro' the veins,
And instant make the wretch expire.
The other grasps beneath his vest
A dagger of envenom'd steel;
Whose lightest touch might pierce the breast,
Whose slightest wound no art might heal.
Around his bloody tain'd eye balls glare,
Each wildly bent to quit it's sphere;
Nor will the radiant orbits bear
The moisture of a single tear.
Now upward would the monster scowl,
But that each dark impending brow,
Still spreading as the loud winds howl,
Confines the impious sight below!
O shield me, heav'n! What means that light
Which pours its radiance o'er the stream?
It is Religion's banner bright;
The fiend's vanish'd—like a dream.