Selected Poems (74 page)

To strive, and those must strive in vain:

For lack of further lives, to slake

The thirst of vengeance now awake,

945

With barbarous blows they gash the dead,

And lop the already lifeless head,

And fell the statues from their niche,

And spoil the shrines of offering rich, ’

And from each other’s rude hands wrest

950

The silver vessels saints had bless’d.

To the high altar on they go;

Oh, but it made a glorious show!

On its table still behold

The cup of consecrated gold;

955

Massy and deep, a glittering prize,

Brightly it sparkles to plunderers’ eyes:

That morn it held the holy wine,

Converted by Christ to his blood so divine,

Which his worshippers drank at the break of day,

960

To shrive their souls ere they join’d in the fray.

Still a few drops within it lay;

And round the sacred table glow

Twelve lofty lamps, in splendid row,

From the purest metal cast;

965

A spoil – the richest, and the last.

XXXIII

So near they came, the nearest stretch’d

To grasp the spoil he almost reach’d,

When old Minotti’s hand

Touch’d with the torch the train —

970

’Tis fired!

Spire, vaults, the shrine, the spoil, the slain,

The turban’d victors, the Christian band,

All that of living or dead remain,

Hurl’d on high with the shiver’d fane,

975

In one wild roar expired!

The shatter’d town – the walls thrown down –

The waves a moment backward bent –

The hills that shake, although unrent,

As if an earthquake pass’d –

980

The thousand shapeless things all driven

In cloud and flame athwart the heaven,

By that tremendous blast –

Proclaim’d the desperate conflict o’er

On that too long afflicted shore:

985

Up to the sky like rockets go

All that mingled there below:

Many a tall and goodly man,

Scorch’d and shrivell’d to a span,

When he fell to earth again

990

Like a cinder strew’d the plain:

Down the ashes shower like rain;

Some fell in the gulf, which received the sprinkles

With a thousand circling wrinkles;

Some fell on the shore, but, far away,

995

Scatter’d o’er the isthmus lay;

Christian or Moslem, which be they?

Let their mothers see and say!

When in cradled rest they lay,

And each nursing mother smiled

1000

On the sweet sleep of her child,

Little deem’d she such a day

Would rend those tender limbs away.

Not the matrons that them bore

Could discern their offspring more;

1005

That one moment left no trace

More of human form or face

Save a scatter’d scalp or bone:

And down came blazing rafters, strown

Around, and many a falling stone,

1010

Deeply dinted in the clay,

All blacken’d there and reeking lay.

All the living things that heard

That deadly earth-shock disappear’d:

The wild birds flew; the wild dogs fled,

1015

And howling left the unburied dead;

The camels from their keepers broke;

The distant steer forsook the yoke –

The nearer steed plunged o’er the plain,

And burst his girth, and tore his rein; ’

1020

The bull-frog’s note, from out the marsh,

Deep-mouth’d arose, and doubly harsh;

The wolves yell’d on the cavern’d hill

Where echo roll’d in thunder still;

The jackal’s troop, in gather’d cry,
¹

1025

Bay’d from afar complainingly,

With a mix’d and mournful sound,

Like crying babe, and beaten hound:

With sudden wing, and ruffled breast,

The eagle left his rocky nest,

1030

And mounted nearer to the sun,

The clouds beneath him seem’d so dun;

Their smoke assail’d his startled beak,

And made him higher soar and shriek –

Thus was Corinth lost and won!

When we two parted

When we two parted

In silence and tears,

Half broken-hearted

To sever for years,

5

Pale grew thy cheek and cold,

Colder thy kiss;

Truly that hour foretold

Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning

10

Sunk chill on my brow –

It felt like the warning

Of what I feel now.

Thy vows are all broken,

And light is thy fame;

15

I hear thy name spoken,

And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,

A knell to mine ear;

A shudder comes o’er me –

20

Why wert thou so dear?

They know not I knew thee,

Who knew thee too well: –

Long, long shall I rue thee,

Too deeply to tell.

25

In secret we met –

In silence I grieve,

That thy heart could forget,

Thy spirit deceive.

If I should meet thee

30

After long years,

How should I greet thee? –

With silence and tears.

1808.

Fare thee well!

‘Alas! they had been friends in Youth;

But whispering tongues can poison truth;

And constancy lives in realms above;

And Life is thorny; and youth is vain:

And to be wroth with one we love,

Doth work like madness in the brain;

* * * * *

But never either found another

To free the hollow heart from paining –

They stood aloof, the scars remaining,

Like cliffs, which had been rent asunder;

A dreary sea now flows between,

But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder

Shall wholly do away, I ween,

The marks of that which once hath been.’

C
OLERIDGE
’S
Christabel
.

Fare thee well! and if for ever,

Still for ever, fare
thee well
:

Even though unforgiving, never

‘Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.

5

Would that breast were bared before thee

Where thy head so oft hath lain,

While that placid sleep came o’er thee

Which thou ne’er canst know again:

Would that breast, by thee glanced over,

10

Every inmost thought could show!

Then thou would’st at last discover

’Twas not well to spurn it so.

Though the world for this commend thee –

Though it smile upon the blow,

15

Even its praises must offend thee,

Founded on another’s woe:

Though my many faults defaced me,

Could no other arm be found,

Than the one which once embraced me,

20

To inflict a cureless wound?

Yet, oh yet, thyself deceive not;

Love may sink by slow decay,

But by sudden wrench, believe not

Hearts can thus be torn away:

25

Still thine own its life retaineth —

Still must mine, though bleeding, beat;

And the undying thought which paineth

Is — that we no more may meet.

These are words of deeper sorrow

30

Than the wail above the dead;

Both shall live, but every morrow

Wake us from a widow’d bed.

And when thou would solace gather,

When our child’s first accents flow,

35

Wilt thou teach her to say ‘Father!’

Though his care she must forego?

When her little hands shall press thee,

When her lip to thine is press’d,

Think of him whose prayer shall bless thee,

40

Think of him thy love had bless’d!

Should her lineaments resemble

Those thou never more may’st see,

Then thy heart will softly tremble

With a pulse yet true to me.

45

All my faults perchance thou knowest,

All my madness none can know;

All my hopes, where’er thou goest,

Wither, yet with
thee
they go.

Every feeling hath been shaken;

50

Pride, which not a world could bow,

Bows to thee — by thee forsaken,

Even my soul forsakes me now:

But ’tis done — all words are idle —

Words from me are vainer still;

55

But the thoughts we cannot bridle

Force their way without the will. —

Fare thee well! — thus disunited,

Torn from every nearer tie,

Sear’d in heart, and lone, and blighted,

60

More than this I scarce can die.

March 17, 1816.