Of blood from mortal steel fell o’er the fields like rain.
VII
For now the despot’s bloodhounds with their prey,
Unarmed and unaware, were gorging deep
Their gluttony of death; the loose array
Of horsemen o’er the wide fields murdering sweep,
And with loud laughter for their Tyrant reap
A harvest sown with other hopes; the while,
Far overhead, ships from Propontis keep
A killing rain of fire. When the waves smile
As sudden earthquakes light many a volcano isle,
VIII
Thus sudden, unexpected feast was spread
For the carrion fowls of Heaven. I saw the sight —
I moved — I lived — as o’er the heaps of dead,
Whose stony eyes glared in the morning light,
I trod; to me there came no thought of flight,
But with loud cries of scorn, which whoso heard
That dreaded death felt in his veins the might
Of virtuous shame return, the crowd I stirred,
And desperation’s hope in many hearts recurred.
IX
A band of brothers gathering round me made,
Although unarmed, a steadfast front, and, still
Retreating, with stern looks beneath the shade
Of gathered eyebrows, did the victors fill
With doubt even in success; deliberate will
Inspired our growing troop; not overthrown,
It gained the shelter of a grassy hill, —
And ever still our comrades were hewn down,
And their defenceless limbs beneath our footsteps strown.
X
Immovably we stood; in joy I found
Beside me then, firm as a giant pine
Among the mountain vapors driven around,
The old man whom I loved; his eyes divine
With a mild look of courage answered mine,
And my young friend was near, and ardently
His hand grasped mine a moment; now the line
Of war extended, to our rallying cry
As myriads flocked in love and brotherhood to die.
XI
For ever while the sun was climbing Heaven
The horseman hewed our unarmed myriads down
Safely, though when by thirst of carnage driven
Too near, those slaves were swiftly overthrown
By hundreds leaping on them; flesh and bone
Soon made our ghastly ramparts; then the shaft
Of the artillery from the sea was thrown
More fast and fiery, and the conquerors laughed
In pride to hear the wind our screams of torment waft.
XII
For on one side alone the hill gave shelter,
So vast that phalanx of unconquered men,
And there the living in the blood did welter
Of the dead and dying, which in that green glen,
Like stifled torrents, made a plashy fen
Under the feet. Thus was the butchery waged
While the sun clomb Heaven’s eastern steep; but, when
It ‘gan to sink, a fiercer combat raged,
For in more doubtful strife the armies were engaged.
XIII
Within a cave upon the hill were found
A bundle of rude pikes, the instrument
Of those who war but on their native ground
For natural rights; a shout of joyance, sent
Even from our hearts, the wide air pierced and rent,
As those few arms the bravest and the best
Seized, and each sixth, thus armed, did now present
A line which covered and sustained the rest,
A confident phalanx which the foes on every side invest.
XIV
That onset turned the foes to flight almost;
But soon they saw their present strength, and knew
That coming night would to our resolute host
Bring victory; so, dismounting, close they drew
Their glittering files, and then the combat grew
Unequal but most horrible; and ever
Our myriads, whom the swift bolt overthrew,
Or the red sword, failed like a mountain river
Which rushes forth in foam to sink in sands forever.
XV
Sorrow and shame, to see with their own kind
Our human brethren mix, like beasts of blood,
To mutual ruin armed by one behind
Who sits and scoffs! — that friend so mild and good,
Who like its shadow near my youth had stood,
Was stabbed! — my old preserver’s hoary hair,
Under my feet! I lost all sense or care,
And like the rest I grew desperate and unaware.
XVI
The battle became ghastlier; in the midst
I paused, and saw how ugly and how fell,
O Hate! thou art, even when thy life thou shedd’st
For love. The ground in many a little dell
Was broken, up and down whose steeps befell
Alternate victory and defeat; and there
The combatants with rage most horrible
Strove, and their eyes started with cracking stare,
And impotent their tongues they lolled into the air,
XVII
Flaccid and foamy, like a mad dog’s hanging.
Want, and Moon-madness, and the pest’s swift Bane,
When its shafts smite — while yet its bow is twanging —
Have each their mark and sign, some ghastly stain;
And this was thine, O War! of hate and pain
Thou loathèd slave! I saw all shapes of death,
And ministered to many, o’er the plain
While carnage in the sunbeam’s warmth did seethe,
Till Twilight o’er the east wove her serenest wreath.
XVIII
The few who yet survived, resolute and firm,
Around me fought. At the decline of day,
Winding above the mountain’s snowy term,
New banners shone; they quivered in the ray
Of the sun’s unseen orb; ere night the array
Of fresh troops hemmed us in — of those brave bands
I soon survived alone — and now I lay
Vanquished and faint, the grasp of bloody hands
I felt, and saw on high the glare of falling brands,
XIX
When on my foes a sudden terror came,
And they fled, scattering. — Lo! with reinless speed
A black Tartarian horse of giant frame,
Comes trampling over the dead; the living bleed
Beneath the hoofs of that tremendous steed,
On which, like to an Angel, robed in white,
Sate one waving a sword; the hosts recede
And fly, as through their ranks, with awful might
Sweeps in the shadow of eve that Phantom swift and bright;
XX
And its path made a solitude. I rose
And marked its coming; it relaxed its course
As it approached me, and the wind that flows
Through night bore accents to mine ear whose force
Might create smiles in death. The Tartar horse
Paused, and I saw the shape its might which swayed,
And heard her musical pants, like the sweet source
Of waters in the desert, as she said,
‘Mount with me, Laon, now’ — I rapidly obeyed.
XXI
Then, ‘Away! away!’ she cried, and stretched her sword
As ‘t were a scourge over the courser’s head,
And lightly shook the reins. We spake no word,
But like the vapor of the tempest fled
Over the plain; her dark hair was dispread
Lik
e the pine’s locks upon the lingering blast;
Over mine eyes its shadowy strings it spread
Fitfully, and the hills and streams fled fast,
As o’er their glimmering forms the steed’s broad shadow passed.
XXII
And his hoofs ground the rocks to fire and dust,
His strong sides made the torrents rise in spray,
And turbulence, as of a whirlwind’s gust,
Surrounded us; — and still away, away,
Through the desert night we sped, while she alway
Gazed on a mountain which we neared, whose crest,
Crowned with a marble ruin, in the ray
Of the obscure stars gleamed; its rugged breast
The steed strained up, and then his impulse did arrest.
XXIII
A rocky hill which overhung the Ocean: —
From that lone ruin, when the steed that panted
Paused, might be heard the murmur of the motion
Of waters, as in spots forever haunted
By the choicest winds of Heaven which are enchanted
To music by the wand of Solitude,
That wizard wild, — and the far tents implanted
Upon the plain, be seen by those who stood
Thence marking the dark shore of Ocean’s curvèd flood.
XXIV
One moment these were heard and seen — another
Passed; and the two who stood beneath that night
Each only heard or saw or felt the other.
As from the lofty steed she did alight,
Cythna (for, from the eyes whose deepest light
Of love and sadness made my lips feel pale
With influence strange of mournfullest delight,
My own sweet Cythna looked) with joy did quail,
And felt her strength in tears of human weakness fail.
XXV
And for a space in my embrace she rested,
Her head on my unquiet heart reposing,
While my faint arms her languid frame invested;
At length she looked on me, and, half unclosing
Her tremulous lips, said, ‘Friend, thy bands were losing
The battle, as I stood before the King
In bonds. I burst them then, and, swiftly choosing
The time, did seize a Tartar’s sword, and spring
Upon his horse, and swift as on the whirlwind’s wing
XXVI
‘Have thou and I been borne beyond pursuer,
And we are here.’ Then, turning to the steed,
She pressed the white moon on his front with pure
And rose-like lips, and many a fragrant weed
From the green ruin plucked that he might feed;
But I to a stone seat that Maiden led,
And, kissing her fair eyes, said, ‘Thou hast need
Of rest,’ and I heaped up the courser’s bed
In a green mossy nook, with mountain flowers dispread.
XXVII
Within that ruin, where a shattered portal
Looks to the eastern stars — abandoned now
By man to be the home of things immortal,
Memories, like awful ghosts which come and go,
And must inherit all he builds below
When he is gone — a hall stood; o’er whose roof
Fair clinging weeds with ivy pale did grow,
Clasping its gray rents with a verdurous woof,
A hanging dome of leaves, a canopy moon-proof.
XXVIII
The autumnal winds, as if spell-bound, had made
A natural couch of leaves in that recess,
Which seasons none disturbed; but, in the shade
Of flowering parasites, did Spring love to dress
With their sweet blooms the wintry loneliness
Of those dead leaves, shedding their stars whene’er
The wandering wind her nurslings might caress;
Whose intertwining fingers ever there
Made music wild and soft that filled the listening air.
XXIX
We know not where we go, or what sweet dream
May pilot us through caverns strange and fair
Of far and pathless passion, while the stream
Of life our bark doth on its whirlpools bear,
Spreading swift wings as sails to the dim air;
Nor should we seek to know, so the devotion
Of love and gentle thoughts be heard still there
Louder and louder from the utmost Ocean
Of universal life, attuning its commotion.
XXX
To the pure all things are pure! Oblivion wrapped
Our spirits, and the fearful overthrow
Of public hope was from our being snapped,
Though linkèd years had bound it there; for now
A power, a thirst, a knowledge, which below
All thoughts, like light beyond the atmosphere
Clothing its clouds with grace, doth ever flow,
Came on us, as we sate in silence there,
Beneath the golden stars of the clear azure air; —
XXXI
In silence which doth follow talk that causes
The baffled heart to speak with sighs and tears,
When wildering passion swalloweth up the pauses
Of inexpressive speech; — the youthful years
Which we together passed, their hopes and fears,
The blood itself which ran within our frames,
That likeness of the features which endears
The thoughts expressed by them, our very names,
And all the wingèd hours which speechless memory claims,
XXXII
Had found a voice; and ere that voice did pass,
The night grew damp and dim, and, through a rent
Of the ruin where we sate, from the morass
A wandering Meteor by some wild wind sent
Hung high in the green dome, to which it lent
A faint and pallid lustre; while the song
Of blasts, in which its blue hair quivering bent,
Strewed strangest sounds the moving leaves among;
A wondrous light, the sound as of a spirit’s tongue.
XXXIII
The Meteor showed the leaves on which we sate,
And Cythna’s glowing arms, and the thick ties
Of her soft hair which bent with gathered weight
My neck near hers; her dark and deepening eyes,
Which, as twin phantoms of one star that lies
O’er a dim well move though the star reposes,
Swam in our mute and liquid ecstasies;
Her marble brow, and eager lips, like roses,
With their own fragrance pale, which Spring but half uncloses.
XXXIV
The Meteor to its far morass returned.
The beating of our veins one interval
Made still; and then I felt the blood that burned
Within her frame mingle with mine, and fall
Around my heart like fire; and over all
A mist was spread, the sickness of a deep
And speechless swoon of joy, as might befall
Two disunited spirits when they leap
In union from this earth’s obscure and fading sleep.
XXXV
Was it one moment that confounded thus
All thought, all sense, all feeling, into one
Unutterable power, which shielded us
Even from our own cold looks, when we had gone
Into a wide and wild oblivion
Of tumult and of tenderness? or now
Had ages, such as make the moon and sun,
The seasons, and mankind their changes know,
Left fear and time unfelt by us alone below?
XXXVI
I know not. What are kisses whose fire clasps
The failing heart in languishment, or limb
Tw
ined within limb? or the quick dying gasps
Of the life meeting, when the faint eyes swim
Through tears of a wide mist boundless and dim,
In one caress? What is the strong control
Which leads the heart that dizzy steep to climb
Where far over the world those vapors roll
Which blend two restless frames in one reposing soul?
XXXVII
It is the shadow which doth float unseen,
But not unfelt, o’er blind mortality,
Whose divine darkness fled not from that green
And lone recess, where lapped in peace did lie
Our linkèd frames, till, from the changing sky
That night and still another day had fled;
And then I saw and felt. The moon was high,
And clouds, as of a coming storm, were spread
Under its orb, — loud winds were gathering overhead.
XXXVIII
Cythna’s sweet lips seemed lurid in the moon,
Her fairest limbs with the night wind were chill,
And her dark tresses were all loosely strewn
O’er her pale bosom; all within was still,
And the sweet peace of joy did almost fill
The depth of her unfathomable look;
And we sate calmly, though that rocky hill
The waves contending in its caverns strook,
For they foreknew the storm, and the gray ruin shook.
XXXIX
There we unheeding sate in the communion
Of interchangèd vows, which, with a rite
Of faith most sweet and sacred, stamped our union.
Few were the living hearts which could unite
Like ours, or celebrate a bridal night
With such close sympathies, for they had sprung
From linkèd youth, and from the gentle might
Of earliest love, delayed and cherished long,
Which common hopes and fears made, like a tempest, strong.
XL
And such is Nature’s law divine that those
Who grow together cannot choose but love,
If faith or custom do not interpose,
Or common slavery mar what else might move
All gentlest thoughts. As in the sacred grove
Which shades the springs of Æthiopian Nile,
That living tree which, if the arrowy dove
Strike with her shadow, shrinks in fear awhile,
But its own kindred leaves clasps while the sunbeams smile,
XLI
And clings to them when darkness may dissever
The close caresses of all duller plants
Which bloom on the wide earth; — thus we forever
Were linked, for love had nursed us in the haunts
Where knowledge from its secret source enchants
Young hearts with the fresh music of its springing,
Ere yet its gathered flood feeds human wants
As the great Nile feeds Egypt, — ever flinging