By the strain quicken’d in the mother’s breast!
There had pass’d many changes o’er her brow,
And cheek, and eye; but into one bright flood
Of tears at last all melted; and she fell
On the glad bosom of her child, and cried,
“Return, return, my son!” The echo caught
A lovelier sound than song, and woke again,
Murmuring, “Return, my son!”
THE SULIOTE MOTHER.
[It is related, in a French life of Ali Pasha, that several of the Suliote women, on the advance of the Turkish troops into the mountain fastnesses, assembled on a lofty summit, and, after chanting a wild song, precipitated themselves, with their children, into the chasm below, to avoid becoming the slaves of the enemy.]