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, | |
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, |
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, | |
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, |