Fra Dolcino, and other poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

“See,” says one warrior to the other,
As they sit on the field of the dead,
While the white moon dies in the dawn's pale skies,
O'er the stream they have made so red;
Where down thro' a gash in the rock it slid,
And thick by its babbling flow
The silver-leaved herbage grew, now hid
By the wrecks of that field of woe:
A strange, a ghastly, and gaudy mass
Did the dews in their silence steep;
Curved blades, gilded breast-plates, and helms of brass,
In a sanguine, shattered heap;
And the wearied victors slept on the grass,
As still as the vanquished sleep.
“See! those grim faces and forms of stone,
Are thy foes and the foes of the Cross.
The Crescent is wan, like yon moon that's nigh gone,
And light hath been our loss.

124

And the King when anew thy triumph he hears,
With new honours will requite
The kinsman who had but sixteen years
When he won him his first fight.
Tho' I am, thou know'st, his kinsman, too,
'T will be my greatest pride,
That I to-day a comrade true
Fought by Bernardo's side.”

“What!” said the other, and a frown
Knit o'er that look of pain—
“Think'st thou I fought for Alonzo's crown?
The Moors that here lie slain—
As fain had I been to head their band,
And the Christians overwhelm,
As stand and receive, from the King's own hand,
The price of a rescued realm.—
Think'st thou, Ramiro, I've forgot
Saldaña's son am I,
That he for five and twenty years
Hath never seen the sky?
Nor sire nor father lived for me,
Tho' all Asturia knows
He was the pearl of knights, and she
Of royal maids the rose.
That peerless love, that perfect pair,
That year of hidden heaven,—
A fitting theme Alonzo's care,
For sad love lays has given!

125

She was the sister of a king,
He was but true and brave;
So he's in a dungeon withering,
She sleeps in a convent grave.
That blinded fettered father
Shall my free youth forget?
Nor deep against th'oppressor score
The ever-swelling debt?”

“Nay, but Alonzo was thy friend,
He reared thee as his own,
His page, his knight, yea, doth intend,
They say, for thee the throne.”—
“Ay, and he taught me all the time
That I was a traitor's child,
He made that memory a crime,
That holiest name defiled.

“But when I grew to boyhood, and heard Saldaña's name,
In whispers named by those who yet loved a true man's fame,
Sounding like some sweet song made up of love and praise,
That secret music changed my heart and haunted all my days.
When ten years past, a boy all fire, I drew this sword of mine,
One dream I had, to free my sire by doing deeds divine.
I heard that horn's long, dreary call from Fontarabia's dell,
That told to Charles the King, how all his peers round Roland fell.

126

Ah, what availed my glory then on Roncevalle's plain?
Ten years—and still Alonzo's king, and my father wears his chain!

“That hope a sullen purpose now, a smothered sparkless fire,
Little I care for king or creed, of glory's self I tire.
I fight in reckless rage to wear the dreary time away,
Or make myself a power to use when God shall grant a day.”
“And hast thou then,” Ramiro asked, “no other tie? or why
Still com'st thou to the court to tell thy tale of victory?”
“Another tie there is,” he said, and mournful grew his tone;
“But for Estella, I were free to shake Alonzo's throne.
But she beside that throne in her soft splendour stands,
And holds my rebel heart in her lovely, queenly hands.
She bids me to be patient till the dark chain's untied;
And I have vowed that not till then I claim her as my bride.”