My feet were planted on his path;
The fever's fire was on my brow;
My blood was seething in its wrath;
I knew no more, nor do I now
Remember how the deed was done.
A shriek aroused me from my trance;
My pulses trembled, one by one;
But such a scene as met my glance!

O God! there there! I see it yet!
Would that I could one hour forget
That marble brow, that eye's fixed stare,
Those matted locks of raven hair,
That crimson vest, that gory knife,
And her, his beautiful young wife,
In tearless, hopeless; mute despair,
Kneeling like some pale statue there!
My hand had made the wreck, and I
Beheld it all and did not die.

'Tis long since then, and I have roved
Far from the valley of my birth,
Alone, forsaken and unloved,
A blot upon the broad, bright earth.
And still the spell that bound my sight
To the wild horrors of that night,
Remains unbroken, and that scream —
The wise may call it fancy's dream;
I reck not, for it was to me
A deep, a dread reality.
I heard it at a certain hour
In lighted hall and lonely bower;
I heard it on the sea at night;
I heard it in the noontide light;
In sun or storm, in calm or gale,
I heard that woman's hopeless wail.

If agony and burning tears,
And deep remorse for long, long years,
Could make accusing conscience cease,
I might have known the balm of peace;
But neither grief, remorse nor time
Can bring oblivion of my crime.
No, no; the black, condemning scroll
Is writ in fire upon my soul.
Oh, I have striven to wander back
In fancy o'er life's faded track,
To the bright, blessed days of youth
With all their innocence and truth!
But all in vain; for first and last,
Amidst the chaos of the past,
My memory only deigned to trace
That stiffening form and pallid face.
Upon the sea and on the land
I saw the blood upon my hand,
And felt — ay, and I feel it now,
The mark of Cain upon my brow.

All that the human heart can bear
Of grief, of anguish and despair —
All that can sear and scathe and blight,
And wrap the soul in rayless night,
My soul has felt and still must feel,
Till death shall set the final seal
Upon the record of a life
Of crime, and wretchedness, and strife.