And louder swell’d the songs of joy through that victorious night,
And faster flow’d the red wine forth, by the stars’ and torches’ light:
But low and deep, amidst the mirth, was heard the conqueror’s moan—
“My brother! O my brother! best and bravest! thou art gone!”
[371] The grief of Ferdinand, King of Arragon, for the loss of his brother, Don Pedro, who was killed during the siege of Naples, is affectingly described by the historian Mariana. It is also the subject of one of the old Spanish Ballads in Lockhart’s beautiful collection.
THE RETURN.
“Hast thou come with the heart of thy childhood back;
The free, the pure, the kind?”
—So murmur’d the trees in my homeward track,
As they play’d to the mountain wind.