A man sits alone at night as a violent storm rages outside. The lamp is dying, ravens shriek, and the world feels full of dreadful omens. At first, the thunder and crashing clouds don’t shake him — he claims a heart “hard as iron.” What truly terrifies him is the quiet voice of his own conscience. Suddenly, the ghost of the murdered Victoria materializes in the whirlwind, clutching a bloody dagger and striding straight toward his lonely room. In a panic, he cries out to the storm itself to carry him away. The poem creates an intense Gothic mood: the wild weather mirrors inner turmoil, but the real horror is the guilt that finally takes visible, inescapable form.
Fragment, or the Triumph of Conscience — Summary
'Twas dead of the night when I sate in my dwelling, One glimmering lamp was expiring and low,-- Around the dark tide of the tempest was swelling, Along the wild mountains night-ravens were yelling, They bodingly presaged destruction and woe!
'Twas then that I started, the wild storm was howling, Nought was seen, save the lightning that danced on the sky, Above me the crash of the thunder was rolling, And low, chilling murmurs the blast wafted by.--
My heart sank within me, unheeded the jar Of the battling clouds on the mountain-tops broke, Unheeded the thunder-peal crashed in mine ear, This heart hard as iron was stranger to fear, But conscience in low noiseless whispering spoke. 'Twas then that her form on the whirlwind uprearing, The dark ghost of the murdered Victoria strode, Her right hand a blood reeking dagger was bearing, She swiftly advanced to my lonesome abode.-- I wildly then called on the tempest to bear me!