That very cheat had cheered me then!
Although detected, welcome still,
Reminding me, through every ill,
Of the abodes of men.
"Onward we went,-but slack and slow;
His savage force at length o'erspent,
The drooping courser, faint and low,
All feebly foaming went.
A sickly infant had had power
To guide him forward in that hour;
But useless all to me.
His new-born tameness naught availed,—
My limbs were bound; my force had failed,
Perchance, had they been free.
With feeble efforts still I tried
To rend the bonds so starkly tied,
But still it was in vain;
My limbs were only wrung
And soon the idle strife gave o'er
Which but prolonged their pain;
The dizzy race seemed almost done,
Although no goal was nearly won;
Some streaks announced the coming sun,—
How slow, alas! he came!
Methought that mist of dawning gray
Would never dapple into day;
How heavily it rolled away,
Before the eastern flame
Rose crimson, and deposed the stars,
And called the radiance from their cars,
And filled the earth, from his deep throne,
With lonely lustre, all his own.
"Up rose the sun; the mists were curled
Back from the solitary world
Which lay around-behind-before.
What booted it to traverse o'er
Plain, forest, river? Man nor brute,
Nor dint of hoof, nor print of foot,
Lay in the wild luxuriant soil;
No sign of travel,—none of toil;
The very air was mute;
And not an insect's shrill small horn,
Nor matin bird's new voice, was borne
From herb nor thicket. Many a werst,
Panting as if his heart would burst,
The weary brute still staggered on;
And still we were, or seemed, alone.
At length, while reeling on our way,
Methought I heard a courser neigh
From out yon tuft of blackening firs.
Is it the wind those branches stirs?
No, no! from out the forest prance
A trampling troop; I see them come! In one vast squadron they advance!
I strove to cry,-my lips were dumb.
The steeds rush on in plunging pride;
But where are they the reins to guide?
A thousand horse, and none to ride!
With flowing tail, and flying mane,
Wide nostrils, never stretched by pain,
Mouths bloodless to the bit or rein,
And feet that iron never shod,
And flanks unscarred by spur or rod,
A thousand horse, the wild, the free,
Like waves that follow o'er the sea,
Came thickly thundering on,
As if our faint approach to meet;
The sight renerved my courser's feet,
A moment staggering, feebly fleet,
A moment, with a faint low neigh,
He answered and then fell:
With gasps and glazing eyes he lay,
And reeking limbs immovable,
His first and last career is done!
On came the troop,-they saw him stoop,
They saw me strangely bound along
His back with many a bloody thong:
They stop, they start,-they snuff the air,
Gallop a moment here and there,
Approach, retire, wheel round and round,
Then plunging back with sudden bound,
Headed by one black mighty steed,
Who seemed the patriarch of his breed,
Without a single speck or hair
Of white upon his shaggy hide;
They snort, they foam, neigh, swerve aside, And backward to the forest fly,
By instinct, from a human eye.
They left me there to my despair, Linked to the dead and stiffening wretch, Whose lifeless limbs beneath me stretch, Relieved from that unwonted weight, From whence I could not extricate Nor him nor me, and there we lay The dying on the dead!
I little deemed another day
Would see my houseless, helpless head.
"And there from morn till twilight bound, I felt the heavy hours toil round, With just enough of life to see
My last of suns go down on me.
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY,
O, weep for Moncontour! O, weep for the hour When the children of darkness and evil had
When the horsemen of Valois triumphantly trod On the bosoms that bled for their rights and their God.
O, weep for Moncontour! O, weep for the slain Who for faith and for freedom lay slaughtered in vain!
O, weep for the living, who linger to bear
The renegade's shame or the exile's despair!
One look, one last look, to the cots and the towers, To the rows of our vines and the beds of our flowers;
To the church where the bones of our fathers
Where we fondly had deemed that our own should be laid.
Alas! we must leave thee, dear desolate home,
To the spearman of Uri, the shavelings of Rome;
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