A cry prophetic of their fall:

It struck even the besieger's ear
With something ominous and drear;
And undefined and sudden thrill,
Which makes the heart a moment still,
Then beat with quicker pulse, ashamed
Of that strange sense its silence framed;
Such as a sudden passing-bell

Wakes, though but for a stranger's knell.

XII.

The tent of Alp was on the shore;

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The sound was hushed, the prayer was o'er; 240 The watch was set, the night - round made,

All mandates issued and obeyed:

'Tis but another anxious night,

His pains the morrow may requite

With all
and love can pay,
revenge
In guerdon for their long delay.

Few hours remain, and he hath need
Of rest, to nerve for many a deed

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Of slaughter; but within his soul

The thoughts like troubled waters roll.
He stood alone among the host;

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Not his the loud fanatic boast

To plant the crescent o'er the cross,

Or risk a life with little loss,

Secure in paradise to be

By Ilouris loved immortally:
Nor his, what burning patriots feel,
The stern exaltedness of zeal,

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Profuse of blood, untired in toil,

When battling on the parent soil.

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He stood alone - a renegade

Against the country he betrayed,
He stood alone amidst his band,
Without a trusted heart or hand:

They followed him, for he was brave,

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And great the spoil he got and gave;

They crouched to him, for he had skill
To warp and wield the vulgar will:

But still his Christian origin

With them was little less than sin.

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They envied even the faithless fame

He earned beneath a Moslem name;
Since he, their migthiest chief, had been
In youth a bitter Nazarene.

They did not know how pride can stoop,

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When baffled feelings withering droop;
They did not know how hate can burn
In hearts once changed from soft to stern;
Nor all the false and fatal zeal

So lions o'er the jackal sway;

The jackal points, he fells the prey,
Then on the vulgar yelling press,

To gorge the relics of success.

XIII.

His head grows fevered, and his pulse
The quick successive throbs convulse;

In vain from side to side he throws
Ilis form, in courtship of repose;
Or if he dozed, a sound, a start
Awoke him with a sunken heart.

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The turban on his hot brow pressed,

The mail weighed lead-like on his breast,

Though oft and long beneath its weight

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Upon his eyes had slumber sate,

Without or couch or canopy,

Except a rougher field and sky

Than now might yield a warrior's bed,
Than now along the heaven was spread,
He could not rest, he could not stay
Within his tent to wait for day,
But walked him forth along the sand,

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Where thousand sleepers strewed the strand.
What pillowed them? and why should he
More wakeful than the humblest be?
Since more their peril, worse their toil,
And yet they fearless dream of spoil;
While he alone, where thousands passed
A night of sleep, perchance their last,
In sickly vigil wandered on,
And envied all he gazed upon.

XVII.

He felt his soul become more light
Beneath the freshness of the night.
Cool was the silent sky, though calm,

And bathed his brow with airy balm:
Behind, the camp - before him lay,
In many a winding creek and bay,
Lepanto's gulf; and, on the brow
Of Delphi's hill, unshaken snow,
High and eternal, such as shone

Through thousand summers brightly gone,
Along the gulf, the mount, the clime;
It will not melt, like man,

to time:

Tyrant and slave are swept away,

Less formed to wear before the ray;

But that white veil, the lightest, frailest,

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Which on the mighty mount thou hailest,
While tower and tree are torn and rent,
Shines o'er its craggy battlement;

In form a peak, in height a cloud,
In texture like a hovering shroud,
Thus high by parting Freedom spread,
As from her fond abode she fled,

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And lingered on the spot, where long

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Her prophet spirit spake in song.

Oh, still her step at moments falters

O'er withered fields, and ruined altars,

And fain would wake, in souls too broken,

By pointing to each glorious token.

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But vain her voice, till better days
Dawn in those yet remembered rays
Which shone upon the Persian flying,
And saw the Spartan smile in dying.

XV.

Not mindless of these mighty times.

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Was Alp, despite his flight and crimes;

And through this night, as on he wandered,

And o'er the past and present pondered,

And thought upon the glorious dead

Who there in better cause bad bled,
He felt how faint and feebly dim

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