Ever proved such a sell as thy spiritless reign.
O, bright as the passion-flower by the wall creeping,
How fair was thy promise till treachery came!
Like the storm of the desert through rose-garden sweeping
And quenched thy brief glory in blood and in flame.
But long by Cabul’s rapid glacier-fed fountains
Shall the young and the old shudder over the fate
Of the fifty men hanging beneath the great mountains
With jackals for mourners to howl by the gate.
And when the cold winter and snows are returning,