Selected Poems (70 page)

When baffled feelings withering droop;

They did not know how hate can burn

In hearts once changed from soft to stern;

Nor all the false and fatal zeal

280

The convert of revenge can feel.

He ruled them – man may rule the worst,

By ever daring to be first;

So lions o’er the jackal sway;

The jackal points, he fells the prey,

285

Then on the vulgar yelling press,

To gorge the relics of success.

XIII

His head grows fever’d, and his pulse

The quick successive throbs convulse;

In vain from side to side he throws

290

His form, in courtship of repose;

Or if he dozed, a sound, a start

Awoke him with a sunken heart.

The turban on his hot brow press’d,

The mail weigh’d lead-like on his breast,

295

Though oft and long beneath its weight

Upon his eyes had slumber sate,

Without or couch or canopy,

Except a rougher field and sky

Than now might yield a warrior’s bed,

300

Than now along the heaven was spread.

He could not rest, he could not stay

Within his tent to wait for day,

But walk’d him forth along the sand,

Where thousand sleepers strew’d the strand.

305

What pillow’d them? and why should he

More wakeful than the humblest be,

Since more their peril, worse their toil?

And yet they fearless dream of spoil;

While he alone, where thousands pass’d

310

A night of sleep, perchance their last,

In sickly vigil wander’d on,

And envied all he gazed upon.

XIV

He felt his soul become more light

Beneath the freshness of the night.

315

Cool was the silent sky, though calm,

And bathed his brow with airy balm:

Behind, the camp – before him lay,

In many a winding creek and bay,

Lepanto’s gulf; and, on the brow

320

Of Delphi’s hill, unshaken snow,

High and eternal, such as shone

Through thousand summers brightly gone,

Along the gulf, the mount, the clime;

It will not melt, like man, to time:

325

Tyrant and slave are swept away,

Less form’d to wear before the ray;

But that white veil, the lightest, frailest,

Which on the mighty mount thou hailest,

While tower and tree are torn and rent,

330

Shines o’er its craggy battlement;

In form a peak, in height a cloud,

In texture like a hovering shroud,

Thus high by parting Freedom spread,

As from her fond abode she fled,

335

And linger’d on the spot, where long

Her prophet spirit spake in song.

Oh! still her step at moments falters

O’er wither’d fields, and ruin’d altars,

And fain would wake, in souls too broken,

340

By pointing to each glorious token:

But vain her voice, till better days

Dawn in those yet remember’d rays

Which shone upon the Persian flying,

And saw the Spartan smile in dying.

XV

345

Not mindless of these mighty times

Was Alp, despite his flight and crimes;

And through this night, as on he wander’d,

And o’er the past and present ponder’d,

And thought upon the glorious dead

350

Who there in better cause had bled,

He felt how faint and feebly dim

The fame that could accrue to him,

Who cheer’d the band, and waved the sword,

A traitor in a turban’d horde;

355

And led them to the lawless siege,

Whose best success were sacrilege.

Not so had those his fancy number’d,

The chiefs whose dust around him slumber’d;

Their phalanx marshall’d on the plain,

360

Whose bulwarks were not then in vain.

They fell devoted, but undying;

The very gale their names seem’d sighing:

The waters murmur’d of their name;

The woods were peopled with their fame;

365

The silent pillar, lone and grey,

Claim’d kindred with their sacred clay;

Their spirits wrapp’d the dusky mountain,

Their memory sparkled o’er the fountain;

The meanest rill, the mightiest river

370

Roll’d mingling with their fame for ever.

Despite of every yoke she bears,

That land is glory’s still and theirs!

’Tis still a watch-word to the earth:

When man would do a deed of worth

375

He points to Greece, and turns to tread,

So sanction’d, on the tyrant’s head:

He looks to her, and rushes on

Where life is lost, or freedom won.

XVI

Still by the shore Alp mutely mused,

380

And woo’d the freshness Night diffused.

There shrinks no ebb in that tideless sea,
¹

Which changeless rolls eternally;

So that wildest of waves, in their angriest mood,

Scarce break on the bounds of the land for a rood;

385

And the powerless moon beholds them flow,

Heedless if she come or go:

Calm or high, in main or bay,

On their course she hath no sway.

The rock unworn its base doth bare,

390

And looks o’er the surf, but it comes not there;

And the fringe of the foam may be seen below,

On the line that it left long ages ago:

A smooth short space of yellow sand

Between it and the greener land.

395

He wander’d on, along the beach,

Till within the range of a carbine’s reach

Of the leaguer’d wall; but they saw him not,

Or how could he ’scape from the hostile shot?

Did traitors lurk in the Christians’ hold?

400

Were their hands grown stiff, or their hearts wax’d cold?

I know not, in sooth; but from yonder wall

There flash’d no fire, and there hiss’d no ball,

Though he stood beneath the bastion’s frown,

That flank’d the sea-ward gate of the town;

405

Though he heard the sound, and could almost tell

The sullen words of the sentinel,

As his measured step on the stone below

Clank’d, as he paced it to and fro;

And he saw the lean dogs beneath the wall

410

Hold o’er the dead their carnival,

Gorging and growling o’er carcass and limb;

They were too busy to bark at him!

From a Tartar’s skull they had stripp’d the flesh,

As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh;

415

And their white tusks crunch’d o’er the whiter skull,
¹

As it slipp’d through their jaws, when their edge grew dull,

As they lazily mumbled the bones of the dead,

When they scarce could rise from the spot where they fed;

So well had they broken a lingering fast

420

With those who had fallen for that night’s repast.

And Alp knew, by the turbans that roll’d on the sand,

The foremost of these were the best of his band:

Crimson and green were the shawls of their wear,

And each scalp had a single long tuft of hair,
²

425

All the rest was shaven and bare.

The scalps were in the wild dog’s maw,

The hair was tangled round his jaw.

But close by the shore, on the edge of the gulf,

There sat a vulture flapping a wolf,

430

Who had stolen from the hills, but kept away,

Scared by the dogs, from the human prey;

But he seized on his share of a steed that lay,

Pick’d by the birds, on the sands of the bay.

XVII

Alp turn’d him from the sickening sight:

435

Never had shaken his nerves in fight;

But he better could brook to behold the dying,