And placed upon that holy shrine

To fix our thoughts on things divine,
When pictured there, we kneeling see
Her, and the boy-God on her knee,
Smiling sweetly on each prayer

To heaven, as if to waft it there.

Still she smiled; even now she smiles,
Though slaughter streams along her aisles :
Minotti lifted his aged eye,

And made the sign of a cross with a sigh,

Then seized a torch which blazed thereby ;
And still he stood, while, with steel and flame,

Inward and onward the Mussulman came.

XXXI.

910

915

The vaults beneath the mosaic stone

920

Contained the dead of ages gone;

Their names were on the graven floor,

But now illegible with gore;

The carved crests, and curious hues

The varied marble's veins diffuse,

Were smeared, and slippery-stained, and strown

With broken swords, and helms o'erthrown:

E

925

There were dead above, and the dead below

Lay cold in

many a coffined row;

You might see them piled in sable state,
By a pale light through a gloomy grate;
But War had entered their dark caves,
And stored along the vaulted graves

Her sulphurous treasures, thickly spread

In masses by the fleshless dead:

Here, throughout the siege, had been
The Christians' chiefest magazine;

To these a late formed train now led,
Minotti's last and stern resource

930

935

Against the foe's o'erwhelming force.

940

XXXII.

The foe came on, and few remain

To strive, and those must strive in vain:

For lack of further lives, to slake

The thirst of vengeance now awake,

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 offerings rich,

945

Converted by Christ to his blood so divine,

Which his worshippers drank at the break of day, To shrive their souls ere they joined in the fray. 960 Still a few drops within it lay;

And round the sacred table glow

Twelve lofty lamps, in splendid row,

From the purest metal cast;

A spoil-the richest, and the last:

965

XXXIII.

So near they came, the nearest stretched
To grasp the spoil he almost reached,

When old Minotti's hand

Touched with the torch the train

"Tis fired!

970

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

The turbaned victors, the Christian band, All that of living or dead remain,

Hurled on high with the shivered fane,

In one wild roar expired!

The shattered town-the walls thrown down

The waves a moment backward bent

The hills that shake, although unrent,

As if an earthquake passed—

The thousand shapeless things all driven
In cloud and flame athwart the heaven,

By that tremendous blast-
Proclaimed the desperate conflict o'er

On that too long afflicted shore:

Up to the sky like rockets go

All that mingled there below:

Many a tall and goodly man,
Scorched and shrivelled to a span,
When he fell to earth again

Like a cinder strewed the plain :

Down the ashes shower like rain;

Some fell in the gulf, which received the sprinkles

With a thousand circling wrinkles;

975

980

985

990

Some fell on the shore, but, far away,
Scattered 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
On the sweet sleep of her child,
Little deemed she such a day

Would rend those tender limbs away.

995

1

1000

The wild birds flew; the wild dogs fled,

And howling left the unburied dead;

1015

The camels from their keepers broke;
The distant steer forsook the yoke-