At last, when daylight ‘gan to fill the air,
He looked on me, and cried in wonder, ‘Thou art here!’
V
Then, suddenly, I knew it was the youth
In whom its earliest hopes my spirit found;
But envious tongues had stained his spotless truth,
And thoughtless pride his love in silence bound,
And shame and sorrow mine in toils had wound,
Whilst he was innocent, and I deluded;
The truth now came upon me — on the ground
Tears of repenting joy, which fast intruded,
Fell fast — and o’er its peace our mingling spirits brooded.
VI
Thus, while with rapid lips and earnest eyes
We talked, a sound of sweeping conflict, spread
As from the earth, did suddenly arise.
From every tent, roused by that clamor dread,
Our bands outsprung and seized their arms; we sped
Towards the sound; our tribes were gathering far.
Those sanguine slaves, amid ten thousand dead
Stabbed in their sleep, trampled in treacherous war
The gentle hearts whose power their lives had sought to spare.
VII
Like rabid snakes that sting some gentle child
Who brings them food when winter false and fair
Allures them forth with its cold smiles, so wild
They rage among the camp; they overbear
The patriot hosts — confusion, then despair,
Descends like night — when ‘Laon!’ one did cry;
Like a bright ghost from Heaven that shout did scare
The slaves, and, widening through the vaulted sky,
Seemed sent from Earth to Heaven in sign of victory.
VIII
In sudden panic those false murderers fled,
Like insect tribes before the northern gale;
But swifter still our hosts encompassèd
Their shattered ranks, and in a craggy vale,
Where even their fierce despair might nought avail,
Hemmed them around! — and then revenge and fear
Made the high virtue of the patriots fail;
One pointed on his foe the mortal spear —
I rushed before its point, and cried ‘Forbear, forbear!’
IX
The spear transfixed my arm that was uplifted
In swift expostulation, and the blood
Gushed round its point; I smiled, and—’Oh! thou gifted
With eloquence which shall not be withstood,
Flow thus!’ I cried in joy, ‘thou vital flood,
Until my heart be dry, ere thus the cause
For which thou wert aught worthy be subdued! —
Ah, ye are pale — ye weep — your passions pause —
‘T is well! ye feel the truth of love’s benignant laws.
X
‘Soldiers, our brethren and our friends are slain;
Ye murdered them, I think, as they did sleep!
Alas, what have ye done? The slightest pain
Which ye might suffer, there were eyes to weep,
But ye have quenched them — there were smiles to steep
Your hearts in balm, but they are lost in woe;
And those whom love did set his watch to keep
Around your tents truth’s freedom to bestow,
Ye stabbed as they did sleep — but they forgive ye now.
XI
‘Oh, wherefore should ill ever flow from ill,
And pain still keener pain forever breed?
We all are brethren — even the slaves who kill
For hire are men; and to avenge misdeed
On the misdoer doth but Misery feed
With her own broken heart! O Earth, O Heaven!
And thou, dread Nature, which to every deed
And all that lives, or is, to be hath given,
Even as to thee have these done ill, and are forgiven.
XII
‘Join then your hands and hearts, and let the past
Be as a grave which gives not up its dead
To evil thoughts.’ — A film then overcast
My sense with dimness, for the wound, which bled
Freshly, swift shadows o’er mine eyes had shed.
When I awoke, I lay ‘mid friends and foes,
And earnest countenances on me shed
The light of questioning looks, whilst one did close
My wound with balmiest herbs, and soothed me to repose;
XIII
And one, whose spear had pierced me, leaned beside
With quivering lips and humid eyes; and all
Seemed like some brothers on a journey wide
Gone forth, whom now strange meeting did befall
In a strange land round one whom they might call
Of peril, which had saved them from the thrall
Of death, now suffering. Thus the vast array
Of those fraternal bands were reconciled that day.
XIV
Lifting the thunder of their acclamation,
Towards the City then the multitude,
And I among them, went in joy — a nation
Made free by love; a mighty brotherhood
Linked by a jealous interchange of good;
A glorious pageant, more magnificent
Than kingly slaves arrayed in gold and blood,
When they return from carnage, and are sent
In triumph bright beneath the populous battlement.
XV
Afar, the City walls were thronged on high,
And myriads on each giddy turret clung,
And to each spire far lessening in the sky
Bright pennons on the idle winds were hung;
As we approached, a shout of joyance sprung
At once from all the crowd, as if the vast
And peopled Earth its boundless skies among
The sudden clamor of delight had cast,
When from before its face some general wreck had passed.
XVI
Our armies through the City’s hundred gates
Were poured, like brooks which to the rocky lair
Of some deep lake, whose silence them awaits,
Throng from the mountains when the storms are there;
And, as we passed through the calm sunny air,
A thousand flower-inwoven crowns were shed,
The token-flowers of truth and freedom fair,
And fairest hands bound them on many a head,
Those angels of love’s heaven that over all was spread.
XVII
I trod as one tranced in some rapturous vision;
Those bloody bands so lately reconciled,
Were ever, as they went, by the contrition
Of anger turned to love, from ill beguiled,
And every one on them more gently smiled
Because they had done evil; the sweet awe
Of such mild looks made their own hearts grow mild,
And did with soft attraction ever draw
Their spirits to the love of freedom’s equal law.
XVIII
And they, and all, in one loud symphony
My name with Liberty commingling lifted —
‘The friend and the preserver of the free!
The parent of this joy!’ and fair eyes, gifted
With feelings caught from one who had uplifted
The light of a great spirit, round me shone;
And all the shapes of this grand scenery shifted
Like restless clouds before the steadfast sun.
Where was that Maid? I asked, but it was known of none.
XIX
Laone was the name her love had chosen,
For she was nameless, and her birth none knew.
Where was Laone now? — The words were frozen
Within my lips with fear; but to subdue
Such dreadful hope to my great task was due,
And when at length one brought reply that she
To-morrow would appear, I then withdrew
To judge what need for that great throng might be,
For now the stars came thick over the twilight sea.
XX
Yet need was none for rest or food to care,
Even though that multitude was passing great,
Since each one for the other did prepare
All kindly succor. Therefore to the gate
Of the Imperial House, now desolate,
I passed, and there was found aghast, alone,
The fallen Tyrant! — silently he sate
Upon the footstool of his golden throne,
Which, starred with sunny gems, in its own lustre shone.
XXI
Alone, but for one child who led before him
A graceful dance — the only living thing,
Of all the crowd, which thither to adore him
Flocked yesterday, who solace sought to bring
In his abandonment; she knew the King
Had praised her dance of yore, and now she wove
Its circles, aye weeping and murmuring,
‘Mid her sad task of unregarded love,
That to no smiles it might his speechless sadness move.
XXII
She fled to him, and wildly clasped his feet
When human steps were heard; he moved nor spoke,
Nor changed his hue, nor raised his looks to meet
The gaze of strangers. Our loud entrance woke
The echoes of the hall, which circling broke
The calm of its recesses; like a tomb
Its sculptured walls vacantly to the stroke
Of footfalls answered, and the twilight’s gloom
Lay like a charnel’s mist within the radiant dome.
XXIII
The little child stood up when we came nigh;
Her lips and cheeks seemed very pale and wan,
But on her forehead and within her eye
Lay beauty which makes hearts that feed thereon
Sick with excess of sweetness; on the throne
She leaned; the King, with gathered brow and lips
Wreathed by long scorn, did inly sneer and frown,
With hue like that when some great painter dips
His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.
XXIV
She stood beside him like a rainbow braided
Within some storm, when scarce its shadows vast
From the blue paths of the swift sun have faded;
A sweet and solemn smile, like Cythna’s, cast
One moment’s light, which made my heart beat fast,
O’er that child’s parted lips — a gleam of bliss,
A shade of vanished days; as the tears passed
Which wrapped it, even as with a father’s kiss
I pressed those softest eyes in trembling tenderness.
XXV
The sceptred wretch then from that solitude
I drew, and, of his change compassionate,
With words of sadness soothed his rugged mood.
But he, while pride and fear held deep debate,
With sullen guile of ill-dissembled hate
Glared on me as a toothless snake might glare;
Pity, not scorn, I felt, though desolate
The desolator now, and unaware
The curses which he mocked had caught him by the hair.
XXVI
I led him forth from that which now might seem
A gorgeous grave; through portals sculptured deep
With imagery beautiful as dream
We went, and left the shades which tend on sleep
Over its unregarded gold to keep
Their silent watch. The child trod faintingly,
And as she went, the tears which she did weep
Glanced in the star-light; wilderèd seemed she,
And, when I spake, for sobs she could not answer me.
XXVII
At last the Tyrant cried, ‘She hungers, slave!
Stab her, or give her bread!’ — It was a tone
Such as sick fancies in a new-made grave
Might hear. I trembled, for the truth was known, —
He with this child had thus been left alone,
And neither had gone forth for food, but he
In mingled pride and awe cowered near his throne,
And she, a nursling of captivity,
Knew nought beyond those walls, nor what such change might be.
XXVIII
And he was troubled at a charm withdrawn
Thus suddenly — that sceptres ruled no more,
That even from gold the dreadful strength was gone
Which once made all things subject to its power;
Such wonder seized him as if hour by hour
The past had come again; and the swift fall
Of one so great and terrible of yore
To desolateness, in the hearts of all
Like wonder stirred who saw such awful change befall.
XXIX
A mighty crowd, such as the wide land pours
Once in a thousand years, now gathered round
The fallen Tyrant; like the rush of showers
Of hail in spring, pattering along the ground,
Their many footsteps fell — else came no sound
From the wide multitude; that lonely man
Then knew the burden of his change, and found,
Concealing in the dust his visage wan,
Refuge from the keen looks which through his bosom ran.
XXX
And he was faint withal. I sate beside him
Upon the earth, and took that child so fair
From his weak arms, that ill might none betide him
Or her; when food was brought to them, her share
To his averted lips the child did bear,
But, when she saw he had enough, she ate,
And wept the while; the lonely man’s despair
Hunger then overcame, and, of his state
Forgetful, on the dust as in a trance he sate.
XXXI
Slowly the silence of the multitudes
Passed, as when far is heard in some lone dell
The gathering of a wind among the woods:
‘And he is fallen!’ they cry, ‘he who did dwell
Like famine or the plague, or aught more fell,
Among our homes, is fallen! the murderer
Who slaked his thirsting soul, as from a well
Of blood and tears, with ruin! he is here!
Sunk in a gulf of scorn from which none may him rear!’
XXXII
Then was heard—’He who judged, let him be brought
To judgment! blood for blood cries from the soil
On which his crimes have deep pollution wrought!
Shall Othman only unavenged despoil?
Shall they, who by the stress of grinding toil
Wrest from the unwilling earth his luxuries,
Perish for crime, while his foul blood may boil
Or creep within his veins at will? Arise!
And to high Justice make her chosen sacrifice!’
XXXIII
‘What do ye seek? what fear ye?’ then I cried,
Suddenly starting forth, ‘that ye should shed
The blood of Othman? if your hearts are tried
In the true love of freedom, cease to dread
This one poor lonely man; beneath Heaven spread
In purest light above us all, through Earth —
Maternal Earth, who doth her sweet smiles shed
For all — let him go free, until the worth
Of human nature win from these a second birth.
XXXIV
‘What call ye justice? Is there one who ne’er
In secret thought has wished another’s ill?
Are ye all pure? Let those stand forth who hear
And tremble not. Shall they insult and kill,
If such they be? their mild eyes can they fill
With the false anger of the hypocrite?
Alas, such were not pure! The chastened will
Of virtue sees that justice is the light
Of love, and not revenge and terror and despite.’
XXXV
The murmur of the people, slowly dying,
Paused as I spake; then those who near me were
Cast gentle looks where the lone man was lying
Shrouding his head, which now that infant fair
Clasped on her lap in silence; through the air
Sobs were then heard, and many kissed my feet
In pity’s madness, and to the despair
Of him whom late they cursed a solace sweet
His very victims brought — soft looks and speeches meet.
XXXVI
Then to a home for his repose assigned,
Accompanied by the still throng, he went
In silence, where to soothe his rankling mind
Some likeness of his ancient state was lent;
And if his heart could have been innocent
As those who pardoned him, he might have ended
His days in peace; but his straight lips were bent,
Men said, into a smile which guile portended, —
A sight with which that child, like hope with fear, was blended.
XXXVII
‘T was midnight now, the eve of that great day
Whereon the many nations, at whose call
The chains of earth like mist melted away,
Decreed to hold a sacred Festival,
A rite to attest the equality of all
Who live. So to their homes, to dream or wake,
All went. The sleepless silence did recall
Laone to my thoughts, with hopes that make
The flood recede from which their thirst they seek to slake.
XXXVIII
The dawn flowed forth, and from its purple fountains
I drank those hopes which make the spirit quail,
As to the plain between the misty mountains
And the great City, with a countenance pale,
I went. It was a sight which might avail
To make men weep exulting tears, for whom
Now first from human power the reverend veil
Was torn, to see Earth from her general womb
Pour forth her swarming sons to a fraternal doom:
XXXIX
To see, far glancing in the misty morning,
The signs of that innumerable host;
To hear one sound of many made, the warning
Of Earth to Heaven from its free children tossed;
While the eternal hills, and the sea lost
In wavering light, and, starring the blue sky,