His dark eye flash’d, his proud breast heaved, his cheek’s blood came and went;
He reach’d that gray-hair’d chieftain’s side, and there, dismounting, bent;
A lowly knee to earth he bent, his father’s hand he took,—
What was there in its touch that all his fiery spirit shook?
That hand was cold—a frozen thing—it dropp’d from his like lead:
He look’d up to the face above—the face was of the dead!
A plume waved o’er the noble brow—the brow was fix’d and white;
He met at last his father’s eyes—but in them was no sight!
Up from the ground he sprang, and gazed, but who could paint that gaze?
They hush’d their very hearts, that saw its horror and amaze;