University of Virginia Library

Hate on his brow and in his heart revenge,
Diomede glared upon the lofty form
That now before the awful statue stood.
No pride, lightening defiance, in his eye,
Dared the despair of fortune; no wild faith
Waited for miracles; but there he stood,
Beautiful in the magnificence of Truth,
Before the haughty scorners of chained kings,
The mightiest and most merciless of earth,
His thought above the proudest of them all,
And on the countless eyes, that watched him, looked
With the sublime serenity unknown
To natures weak or terrible as hours
And their events decree. No joy, no pain
Changed the fixed features of a calm resolve;
No glance betrayed a triumph in his fate,
Or doubt that might avert his martyrdom.
Upon the still crowd rose his gentle eyes
Blue and translucent as the heaven, as erst
The sungod, gliding up the glacier steeps
Of Hæmus, o'er the tossed Ægean cast
His deathless smile among the Cyclades.
Pure in his faith and passionless in truth,
He never sought to seal with agony
The creed of the Anointed, but, instead,
Shunned Paynimrie's resort and dwelt in wilds,
Distrusting the infirmities that oft
O'ersway the spirit; but the fated hour
Had not passed by—the one deep love, that chained
His heart to earth, was parted, it might be
To welcome him to paradise, if not,
To meet his welcome there; and now, beyond
The tyrant passions of the world, he stood
Dauntless 'mid heathendom, and thus, in tones
Strong as the ocean's, in whose utter deeps
The Alps may sink, yet leave vast deeps above,
He to the image of the Thunderer spake.