“But ends thy tether! for Janina makes
A grave for thee where every turret quakes,
And thou shalt drop below
To where the spirits, to a tree enchained,
Will clutch thee, there to be ’mid them retained
For all to-come in woe!
“Or if, by happy chance, thy soul might flee
Thy victims, after, thou shouldst surely see
And hear thy crimes relate;
Streaked with the guileless gore drained from their
veins,
Greater in number than the reigns on reigns
Thou hopedst for thy state.
“This so will be! and neither fleet nor fort
Can stay or aid thee as the deathly port
Receives thy harried frame!
Though, like the cunning Hebrew knave of old,
To cheat the angel black, thou didst enfold
In altered guise thy name.”
Ali deemed anchorite or saint a pawn—
The crater of his blunderbuss did yawn,
Sword, dagger hung at ease:
But he had let the holy man revile,
Though clouds o’erswept his brow; then, with
a smile,
He tossed him his pelisse.
("Allah! qui me rendra-")
[XVL, May, 1828.]
Oh, Allah! who will give me back my terrible array?
My emirs and my cavalry that shook the earth to-day;
My tent, my wide-extending camp, all dazzling to the
sight,
Whose watchfires, kindled numberless beneath the brow
of night,
Seemed oft unto the sentinel that watched the midnight
hours,
As heaven along the sombre hill had rained its stars
in showers?
Where are my beys so gorgeous, in their light pelisses
gay,
And where my fierce Timariot bands, so fearless in
the fray;
My dauntless khans, my spahis brave, swift thunderbolts
of war;
My sunburnt Bedouins, trooping from the Pyramids afar,
Who laughed to see the laboring hind stand terrified
at gaze,
And urged their desert horses on amid the ripening
maize?
These horses with their fiery eyes, their slight untiring
feet,
That flew along the fields of corn like grasshoppers
so fleet—
What! to behold again no more, loud charging o’er
the plain,
Their squadrons, in the hostile shot diminished all
in vain,
Burst grandly on the heavy squares, like clouds that
bear the storms,
Enveloping in lightning fires the dark resisting swarms!
Oh! they are dead! their housings bright are trailed
amid their gore;
Dark blood is on their manes and sides, all deeply
clotted o’er;
All vainly now the spur would strike these cold and
rounded flanks,
To wake them to their wonted speed amid the rapid
ranks:
Here the bold riders red and stark upon the sands
lie down,
Who in their friendly shadows slept throughout the
halt at noon.
Oh, Allah! who will give me back my terrible array?
See where it straggles ’long the fields for
leagues on leagues away,
Like riches from a spendthrift’s hand flung
