Zamorna, in prison, cries out to his “false friend and treacherous guide”:
“If I have sinned; long, long ago
That sin was purified by woe.
I have suffered on through night and day,
I’ve trod a dark and frightful way.”
It is what Heathcliff says to Catherine Earnshaw: “I’ve fought through a bitter life since I last heard your voice.”
And again:
If grief for grief can touch thee,
If answering woe for woe,
If any ruth can melt thee,
Come to me now.
It is the very voice of Heathcliff calling to Cathy.
Again, he is calling to “Percy”, the father of Mary, his bride, the rose that he plucked from its parent stem, that died from the plucking.
Bitterly, deeply I’ve drunk of thy
woe;
When thy stream was troubled, did mine
calmly flow?
And yet I repent not; I’d crush
thee again
If our vessels sailed adverse on life’s
stormy main.
But listen! The earth is our campaign
of war,
* * * * *
Is there not havoc and carnage for thee
Unless thou couchest thy lance at me?
He proposes to unite their arms.
Then might thy Mary bloom blissfully still
This hand should ne’er work her
sorrow or ill.
* * * * *
What! shall Zamorna go down to the dead
With blood on his hands that he wept to
have shed?
The alliance is refused. Percy is crushed. Mary is dying, the rose is withering.
Its faded buds already lie
To deck my coffin when I die.
Bring them here—’twill
not be long,
’Tis the last word of the woeful
song;
And the final and dying words are sung
To the discord of lute strings all unstrung.
* * * * *
Have I crushed you, Percy? I’d
raise once more
The beacon-light on the rocky shore.
Percy, my love is so true and deep,
That though kingdoms should wail and worlds
should weep,
I’d fling the brand in the hissing
sea,
The brand that must burn unquenchably.
Your rose is mine; when the sweet leaves
fade,
They must be the chaplet to wreathe my
head
The blossoms to deck my home with the
dead.
Zamorna is tenderer than Heathcliff. He laments for his rose.
On its bending stalk a bonny flower
In a yeoman’s home close
grew;
It had gathered beauty from sunshine and
shower,
From moonlight and silent
dew.
* * * * *
Keenly his flower the yeoman guarded,
He watched it grow both day
and night;
From the frost, from the wind, from the
storm he warded
That flush of roseate light.
And ever it glistened bonnilie
Under the shade of the old yew-tree.
* * * * *
The rose is blasted, withered, blighted
Its root has felt a worm,
And like a heart beloved and slighted,
Failed, faded, shrunk its
form.
Bud of beauty, bonny flower,
I stole thee from thy natal
bower.