The hostile Sabini were pleased, as one meshing a bird;
She sang for them there in the ambush: they smiled as they heard.
Her sombre hair purpled in gleams, as she leaned to the light;
All day she had idled and feasted, and now it was night.
The chief sat apart, heavy-browed, brooding elbow on knee;
The armlets he wore were thrice royal, and wondrous to see:
Exquisite artifice, work of barbaric design,
Frost's fixèd mimicry; orbic imaginings fine
In sevenfold coils: and in orient glimmer from them,
The variform voluble swinging of gem upon gem.
And the glory thereof sent fever and fire to her eye.
"I had never such trinkets!" she sighed,—like a lute was her sigh.
"Were they mine at the plea, were they mine for the token, all told,
Now the citadel sleeps, now my father the keeper is old,"
"If I go by the way that I know, and thou followest hard,
If yet at the touch of Tarpeia the gates be unbarred?"
The chief trembled sharply for joy, then drew rein on his soul:
"Of all this arm beareth I swear I will cede thee the whole."
And up from the nooks of the camp, with hoarse plaudit outdealt,
The bearded Sabini glanced hotly, and vowed as they knelt,