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 | The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere |  |
O my child!
Thy tears which fall so quickly on my hand
Warn me to cease. Not all was woe, was shame:
Alaric was Christian, and his Goths in part;
They spared the maid, the nun; of many great ones
Some few were buried in their native soil.
Beneath a gloomier vault the Conqueror lies.
Alaric's dread task accomplished, on him first
Earthly ambition fell. Southward he marched
To make a second continent his prey.
His Maker smote that proud one that he died.
Three days in wrath they mourned him; on the fourth
A counsel rose among them. Swift and near
A river rushed: they forced a captive host
To sluice away its waters. In its bed
They built a tomb trophied with spoils of Rome:
Therein they laid their mighty One. Once more
They rolled that river through its channel old,
Then slew that captive host. ‘No man,’ they sware,
‘Shall peer into the secret of the King;
None trouble his remains.’
Thy tears which fall so quickly on my hand
Warn me to cease. Not all was woe, was shame:
Alaric was Christian, and his Goths in part;
They spared the maid, the nun; of many great ones
Some few were buried in their native soil.
Beneath a gloomier vault the Conqueror lies.
Alaric's dread task accomplished, on him first
Earthly ambition fell. Southward he marched
To make a second continent his prey.
His Maker smote that proud one that he died.
Three days in wrath they mourned him; on the fourth
A counsel rose among them. Swift and near
A river rushed: they forced a captive host
To sluice away its waters. In its bed
They built a tomb trophied with spoils of Rome:
Therein they laid their mighty One. Once more
They rolled that river through its channel old,
Then slew that captive host. ‘No man,’ they sware,
‘Shall peer into the secret of the King;
186
| The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere | |