Not that had hurt me, but the void which love will make if unemployed.
I spent my strength to keep him quiet, and free the thoughts that he decoyed,
Till woods and Rhone were out of range. I often wondered at the change
In nature's child, in me. The formulæ were there. "God's ways are strange."
Yet in my struggle with the powers of darkness I recalled the showers
Of light that fought the undergrowth to catch the singing of the flowers.
Time passed, and no one seemed to reck of Zenghi, the first Atabek,
Though every year we failed to act the Saracens grew more compact.
In vain I urged that we might fall, so slender was our human wall,
So numberless the foe beside the Templars and the Hospital.