XII.
The tent of Alp was on the shore;
The sound was hushed, the prayer was o'er;
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 Revenge and Love can pay, 290
In guerdon for their long delay.
Few hours remain, and he hath need
Of rest, to nerve for many a deed
Of slaughter; but within his soul
The thoughts like troubled waters roll.[ou]
He stood alone among the host;
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 300
By Houris loved immortally:
Nor his, what burning patriots feel,
The stern exaltedness of zeal,
Profuse of blood, untired in toil,
When battling on the parent soil.
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, 310
And great the spoil he got and gave;
They crouched to him, for he had skill
To warp and wield the vulgar will:[ov]
But still his Christian origin
With them was little less than sin.
They envied even the faithless fame
He earned beneath a Moslem name;
Since he, their mightiest chief, had been
In youth a bitter Nazarene.
They did not know how Pride can stoop, 320
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
The convert of Revenge can feel.
He ruled them—man may rule the worst,
By ever daring to be first:
So lions o'er the jackals sway;
The jackal points, he fells the prey,[ow][351]
Then on the vulgar, yelling, press, 330
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
His form, in courtship of repose;[ox]
Or if he dozed, a sound, a start
Awoke him with a sunken heart.
The turban on his hot brow pressed,
The mail weighed lead-like on his breast,
Though oft and long beneath its weight 340
Upon his eyes had slumber sate,
Without or couch or canopy,
Except a rougher field and sky[oy]
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,[oz]
But walked him forth along the sand,
Where thousand sleepers strewed the strand.
What pillowed them? and why should he 350
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.
XIV.
He felt his soul become more light
Beneath the freshness of the night.
Cool was the silent sky, though calm, 360
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,[pa]
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, 370
Less formed to wear before the ray;
But that white veil, the lightest, frailest,[352]
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,
And lingered on the spot, where long 380
Her prophet spirit spake in song.[pb]
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:
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 390
Was Alp, despite his flight and crimes;
And through this night, as on he wandered,[pc]
And o'er the past and present pondered,
And thought upon the glorious dead
Who there in better cause had bled,
He felt how faint and feebly dim[pd]
The fame that could accrue to him,
Who cheered the band, and waved the sword,[pe]
A traitor in a turbaned horde;
And led them to the lawless siege, 400
Whose best success were sacrilege.
Not so had those his fancy numbered,[353]
The chiefs whose dust around him slumbered;
Their phalanx marshalled on the plain,
Whose bulwarks were not then in vain.
They fell devoted, but undying;
The very gale their names seemed sighing;
The waters murmured of their name;
The woods were peopled with their fame;
The silent pillar, lone and grey, 410
Claimed kindred with their sacred clay;
Their spirits wrapped the dusky mountain,
Their memory sparkled o'er the fountain;[pf]
The meanest rill, the mightiest river
Rolled mingling with their fame for ever.
Despite of every yoke she bears,
That land is Glory's still and theirs![pg]
'Tis still a watch-word to the earth:
When man would do a deed of worth
He points to Greece, and turns to tread, 420
So sanctioned, on the tyrant's head:
He looks to her, and rushes on
Where life is lost, or Freedom won.[ph]
XVI.
Still by the shore Alp mutely mused,
And wooed the freshness Night diffused.
There shrinks no ebb in that tideless sea,[354]
Which changeless rolls eternally;
So that wildest of waves, in their angriest mood,[pi]
Scarce break on the bounds of the land for a rood;
And the powerless moon beholds them flow, 430
Heedless if she come or go:
Calm or high, in main or bay,
On their course she hath no sway.
The rock unworn its base doth bare,
And looks o'er the surf, but it comes not there;
And the fringe of the foam may be seen below,
On the line that it left long ages ago:
A smooth short space of yellow sand[pj][355]
Between it and the greener land.