The works of Lord Byron :: :: University of Virginia Library

The works of Lord Byron

A new, revised and enlarged edition, with illustrations. Edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge and R. E. Prothero

Byron, George Gordon Byron (1788-1824)

Vol. I. HOURS OF IDLENESS AND OTHER EARLY POEMS.

II.

III.

IV.

II.

III.

THE DEFORMED TRANSFORMED:

THE AGE OF BRONZE;

THE ISLAND;

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VII.

But not alone within the hoariest clime
Where Freedom dates her birth with that of Time,
And not alone where, plunged in night, a crowd

558

Of Incas darken to a dubious cloud,
The dawn revives: renowned, romantic Spain
Holds back the invader from her soil again.
Not now the Roman tribe nor Punic horde
Demands her fields as lists to prove the sword;
Not now the Vandal or the Visigoth
Pollute the plains, alike abhorring both;
Nor old Pelayo on his mountain rears
The warlike fathers of a thousand years.
That seed is sown and reaped, as oft the Moor
Sighs to remember on his dusky shore.
Long in the peasant's song or poet's page
Has dwelt the memory of Abencerrage;
The Zegri, and the captive victors, flung
Back to the barbarous realm from whence they sprung.
But these are gone—their faith, their swords, their sway,
Yet left more anti-christian foes than they;
The bigot monarch, and the butcher priest,
The Inquisition, with her burning feast,
The Faith's red “Auto,” fed with human fuel,
While sate the catholic Moloch, calmly cruel,
Enjoying, with inexorable eye,

559

That fiery festival of Agony!
The stern or feeble sovereign, one or both
By turns; the haughtiness whose pride was sloth;
The long degenerate noble; the debased
Hidalgo, and the peasant less disgraced,
But more degraded; the unpeopled realm;
The once proud navy which forgot the helm;
The once impervious phalanx disarrayed;
The idle forge that formed Toledo's blade;
The foreign wealth that flowed on every shore,
Save hers who earned it with the native's gore;
The very language which might vie with Rome's,
And once was known to nations like their homes,
Neglected or forgotten:—such was Spain;
But such she is not, nor shall be again.
These worst, these home invaders, felt and feel
The new Numantine soul of old Castile,
Up! up again! undaunted Tauridor!
The bull of Phalaris renews his roar;
Mount, chivalrous Hidalgo! not in vain
Revive the cry—“Iago! and close Spain!”
Yes, close her with your arméd bosoms round,
And form the barrier which Napoleon found,—
The exterminating war, the desert plain,
The streets without a tenant, save the slain;
The wild Sierra, with its wilder troop
Of vulture-plumed Guerrillas, on the stoop
For their incessant prey; the desperate wall
Of Saragossa, mightiest in her fall;
The Man nerved to a spirit, and the Maid
Waving her more than Amazonian blade;
The knife of Arragon, Toledo's steel;

560

The famous lance of chivalrous Castile;
The unerring rifle of the Catalan;
The Andalusian courser in the van;
The torch to make a Moscow of Madrid;
And in each heart the spirit of the Cid:—
Such have been, such shall be, such are. Advance,
And win—not Spain! but thine own freedom, France!

“‘St. Jago and close Spain!’ the old Spanish war-cry.”

The Arragonians are peculiarly dexterous in the use of this weapon, and displayed it particularly in former French wars.