Within the inmost fort by pine trees made,20
The hardy women kneel to warrior gods.
For where the Saxon armaments invade,
All life abandons their resign'd abodes.
The tents they pitch the all they prize contain;
And each new march is for a new domain.
To the stern gods the fair-hair'd women kneel,21
As slow to rest the red sun glides along;
And near and far, hammers, and clanking steel,
Neighs from impatient barbs, and runic song
Mutter'd o'er mystic fires by wizard priests,
Invite the Valkyrs to the raven feasts.
For after nine long moons of siege and storm,22
Thy hold, Pendragon, trembles to its fall!
Loftier the Roman tower uprears its form,
From the crush'd bastion and the shatter'd wall.
And but till night those iron floods delay
Their rush of thunder:—Blood-red sinks the day.
Death halts to strike, and swift the moment flies:23
Within the walls (than all without more fell),
Discord with Babel tongues confounds the wise,
And spectral Panic, like a form of hell
Chased by a Fury, fleets,—or, stone-like, stands
Dull-eyed Despondence, palsying nerveless hands.
And Pride, that evil angel of the Celt,24
Whispers to all "'tis servile to obey,"
Robs order'd Union of its starry belt,
Rends chief from chief and tribe from tribe away,
And leaves the children wrangling for command
Round the wild death-throes of the Father-land.
In breadless marts, the ill-persuading fiend25
Famine, stalks maddening with her wolfish stare;
And hearts, on whose stout anchors Faith had lean'd,
Bound at her look to treason from despair,
Shouting, "Why shrink we from the Saxon's thrall?
Is slavery worse than Famine smiting all?"
Thus, in the absence of the sunlike king,26
All phantoms stalk abroad; dissolve and droop
Light and the life of nations—while the wing
Of Carnage halts but for its rushing swoop.
Some moan, some rave, some laze the hours away;—
And down from Carduel blood-red sunk the day!
Leaning against a broken parapet27
Alone with Thought, mused Caradoc the Bard,
When a voice smote him, and he turn'd and met
A gaze prophetic in its sad regard.
Beside him, solemn with his hundred years,
Stood the arch hierarch of the Cymrian seers.
"Dost thou remember," said the Sage, "that hour28
When seeking signs to Glory's distant way,
Thou heard'st the night bird in her leafy bower,
Singing sweet death-chaunts to her shining prey,
While thy young poet-heart, with ravish'd breath,
Hung on the music, nor divined the death?"[1]
"Ay," the bard answer'd, "and ev'n now methought29
I heard again the ambrosial melody!"
"So," sigh'd the Prophet, "to the bard, unsought,
Come the far whispers of Futurity!
Like his own harp, his soul a wind can thrill,
And the chord murmur, though the hand be still.