Selected Poems (72 page)

’Tis passing, and will pass full soon –

600

If, by the time its vapoury sail

Hath ceased her shaded orb to veil,

Thy heart within thee is not changed,

Then God and man are both avenged;

Dark will thy doom be, darker still

605

Thine immortality of ill.’

Alp look’d to heaven, and saw on high

The sign she spake of in the sky;

But his heart was swollen, and turn’d aside

By deep interminable pride.

610

This first false passion of his breast

Roll’d like a torrent o’er the rest.

He
sue for mercy!
He
dismay’d

By wild words of a timid maid!

He
, wrong’d by Venice, vow to save

615

Her sons, devoted to the grave!

No – though that cloud were thunder’s worst,

And charged to crush him – let it burst!

He look’d upon it earnestly,

Without an accent of reply;

620

He watch’d it passing; it is flown:

Full on his eye the clear moon shone,

And thus he spake – ‘Whate’er my fate,

I am no changeling — ’tis too late:

The reed in storms may bow and quiver,

625

Then rise again; the tree must shiver.

What Venice made me, I must be,

Her foe in all, save love to thee:

But thou art safe: oh, fly with me!’

He turn’d, but she is gone!

630

Nothing is there but the column stone.

Hath she sunk in the earth, or melted in air?

He saw not – he knew not – but nothing is there.

XXII

The night is past, and shines the sun

As if that morn were a jocund one.

635

Lightly and brightly breaks away

The Morning from her mantle grey,

And the Noon will look on a sultry day.

Hark to the trump, and the drum,

And the mournful sound of the barbarous horn,

640

And the flap of the banners, that flit as they’re borne,

And the neigh of the steed, and the multitude’s hum,

And the clash, and the shout, ‘They come! they come!’

The horsetails
¹
are pluck’d from the ground, and the sword

From its sheath: and they form, and but wait for the word.

645

Tartar, and Spahi, and Turcoman,

Strike your tents, and throng to the van;

Mount ye, spur ye, skirr the plain,

That the fugitive may flee in vain,

When he breaks from the town; and none escape,

650

Aged or young, in the Christian shape;

While your fellows on foot, in a fiery mass,

Bloodstain the breach through which they pass.

The steeds are all bridled, and snort to the rein;

Curved is each neck, and flowing each mane;

655

White is the foam of their champ on the bit;

The spears are uplifted; the matches are lit;

The cannon are pointed, and ready to roar,

And crush the wall they have crumbled before:

Forms in his phalanx each Janizar;

660

Alp at their head; his right arm is bare,

So is the blade of his scimitar;

The khan and the pachas are all at their post;

The vizier himself at the head of the host.

When the culverin’s signal is fired, then on;

665

Leave not in Corinth a living one –

A priest at her altars, a chief in her halls,

A hearth in her mansions, a stone on her walls.

God and the prophet – Alla Hu!

Up to the skies with that wild halloo!

670

‘There the breach lies for passage, the ladder to scale;

And your hands on your sabres, and how should ye fail?

He who first downs with the red cross may crave

His heart’s dearest wish; let him ask it, and have!’

Thus utter’d Coumourgi, the dauntless vizier;

675

The reply was the brandish of sabre and spear,

And the shout of fierce thousands in joyous ire: –

Silence — hark to the signal — fire!

XXIII

As the wolves, that headlong go

On the stately buffalo,

680

Though with fiery eyes, and angry roar,

And hoofs that stamp, and horns that gore,

He tramples on earth, or tosses on high

The foremost, who rush on his strength but to die:

Thus against the wall they went,

685

Thus the first were backward bent;

Many a bosom, sheathed in brass,

Strew’d the earth like broken glass,

Shiver’d by the shot, that tore

The ground whereon they moved no more:

690

Even as they fell, in files they lay,

Like the mower’s grass at the close of day,

When his work is done on the levell’d plain;

Such was the fall of the foremost slain.

XXIV

As the spring-tides, with heavy plash,

695

From the cliffs invading dash

Huge fragments, sapp’d by the ceaseless flow,

Till white and thundering down they go,

Like the avalanche’s snow

On the Alpine vales below;

700

Thus at length, outbreathed and worn,

Corinth’s sons were downward borne

By the long and oft renew’d

Charge of the Moslem multitude.

In firmness they stood, and in masses they fell,

705

Heap’d by the host of the infidel,

Hand to hand, and foot to foot:

Nothing there, save death, was mute;

Stroke, and thrust, and flash, and cry

For quarter, or for victory,

710

Mingle there with the volleying thunder,

Which makes the distant cities wonder

How the sounding battle goes,

If with them, or for their foes;

If they must mourn, or may rejoice

715

In that annihilating voice,

Which pierces the deep hills through and through

With an echo dread and new:

You might have heard it, on that day,

O’er Salamis and Megara;

720

(We have heard the hearers say,)

Even unto Piraeus’ bay.

XXV

From the point of encountering blades to the hilt,

Sabres and swords with blood were gilt;

But the rampart is won, and the spoil begun,

725

And all but the after carnage done.

Shriller shrieks now mingling come

From within the plunder’d dome:

Hark to the haste of flying feet,

That splash in the blood of the slippery street;

730

But here and there, where ’vantage ground

Against the foe may still be found,

Desperate groups, of twelve or ten,

Make a pause, and turn again —

With banded backs against the wall,

735

Fiercely stand, or fighting fall.

There stood an old man – his hairs were white,

But his veteran arm was full of might:

So gallantly bore he the brunt of the fray,

The dead before him, on that day,

740

In a semicircle lay;

Still he combated unwounded,

Though retreating, unsurrounded.

Many a scar of former fight

Lurk’d beneath his corslet bright;

745

But of every wound his body bore,

Each and all had been ta’en before:

Though aged, he was so iron of limb,

Few of our youth could cope with him;

And the foes, whom he singly kept at bay,

750

Outnumber’d his thin hairs of silver grey.

From right to left his sabre swept;

Many an Othman mother wept

Sons that were unborn, when dipp’d

His weapon first in Moslem gore,

755

Ere his years could count a score.

Of all he might have been the sire

Who fell that day beneath his ire:

For, sonless left long years ago,

His wrath made many a childless foe;

760

And since the day, when in the strait
¹

His only boy had met his fate,