LII.

Portend the deeds to come:

but he whose nod

Has tumbled feebler despots from their sway,
A moment pauseth ere he lifts the rod;

A little moment deigneth to delay :

Soon will his legions sweep through these their way; The West must own the Scourger of the world. Ah! Spain! how sad will be thy reckoning-day, When soars Gaul's Vulture, with his wings unfurl'd, And thou shalt view thy sons in crowds to Hades hurl'd.

LIII.

And must they fall? the young, the proud, the brave,
To swell one bloated Chief's unwholesome reign?
No step between submission and a grave?
The rise of rapine and the fall of Spain?
And doth the Power that man adores ordain
Their doom, nor heed the suppliant's appeal?
Is all that desperate Valour acts in vain ?
And Counsel sage, and patriotic Zeal,

[of steel? The Veteran's skill, Youth's fire, and Manhood's heart

LIV.

Is it for this the Spanish maid, aroused,
Hangs on the willow her unstrung guitar,
And, all unsex'd, the anlace hath espoused,

Sung the loud song, and dared the deed of war?
And she, whom once the semblance of a scar
Appall'd, an owlet's larum chill'd with dread,
Now views the column-scattering bay'net jar,
The falchion flash, and o'er the yet warm dead
Stalks with Minerva's step where Mars might quake to
tread.

fortified in every defile through which I passed in my way to Seville.

LV.

Ye who shall marvel when you hear her tale,
Oh! had you known her in her softer hour,
Mark'd her black eye that mocks her coal-black veil,
Heard her light, lively tones in Lady's bower,
Seen her long locks that foil the painter's power,
Her fairy form, with more than female grace,
Scarce would you deem that Saragoza's tower
Beheld her smile in Danger's Gorgon face,

Thin the closed ranks, and lead in Glory's fearful chase.

Her lover sinks

LVI.

she sheds no ill-timed tear;

Her chief is slain - she fills his fatal post;

Her fellows flee

The foe retires

she checks their base career;
she heads the sallying host:

Who can appease like her a lover's ghost?
Who can avenge so well a leader's fall?

What maid retrieve when man's flush'd hope is lost?
Who hang so fiercely on the flying Gaul,

Foil'd by a woman's hand, before a batter'd wall?

Such were the exploits of the Maid of Saragoza, who by her valour elevated herself to the highest rank of heroines. When the author was at Seville, she walked daily on the Prado, decorated with medals and orders, by command of the Junta. [The exploits of Augustina, the famous heroine of both the sieges of Saragoza, are recorded at length in one of the most splendid chapters of Southey's History of the Peninsular War. At the time when she first attracted notice, by mounting a battery where her lover had fallen, and working a gun in his room, she was in her twenty-second year, exceedingly pretty, and in a soft feminine style of beauty. She has further had the honour to be painted by Wilkie, and alluded to in Wordsworth's Dissertation on the Convention (misnamed) of Cintra; where a noble passage concludes in these words: -" Saragoza has exemplified a melancholy, yea, a dismal truth,-yet consolatory and full of joy,—that when a

LVII.

Yet are Spain's maids no race of Amazons,
But form'd for all the witching arts of love:
Though thus in arms they emulate her sons,
And in the horrid phalanx dare to move,
'Tis but the tender fierceness of the dove,
Pecking the hand that hovers o'er her mate:
In softness as in firmness far above

Remoter females, famed for sickening prate;
Her mind is nobler sure, her charms perchance as great.

LVIII.

The seal Love's dimpling finger hath impress'd
Denotes how soft that chin which bears his touch: 1
Her lips, whose kisses pout to leave their nest,
Bid man be valiant ere he merit such :

Her glance how wildly beautiful! how much
Hath Phoebus woo'd in vain to spoil her cheek,
Which glows yet smoother from his amorous clutch!
Who round the North for paler dames would seek?
How poor their forms appear! how languid, wan, and
weak!

people are called suddenly to fight for their liberty, and are sorely pressed upon, their best field of battle is the floors upon which their children have played; the chambers where the family of each man has slept; upon or under the roofs by which they have been sheltered; in the gardens of their recreation; in the street, or in the market-place; before the altars of their temples, and among their congregated dwellings, blazing or uprooted."]

1

"Sigilla in mento impressa Amoris digitulo

Vestigio demonstrant mollitudinem."-AUL. Gel.

LIX.

Match me, ye climes! which poets love to laud;
Match me, ye harems of the land! where now 1
I strike my strain, far distant, to applaud
Beauties that ev 'n a cynic must avow;

Match me those Houries, whom ye scarce allow
To taste the gale lest Love should ride the wind,
With Spain's dark-glancing daughters 3 — deign to
know,

3

There your wise Prophet's paradise we find, His black-eyed maids of Heaven, angelically kind.

LX.

Oh, thou Parnassus !4 whom I now survey,
Not in the phrensy of a dreamer's eye,
Not in the fabled landscape of a lay,

But soaring snow-clad through thy native sky,
In the wild pomp of mountain-majesty !
What marvel if I thus essay to sing?

The humblest of thy pilgrims passing by
Would gladly woo thine Echoes with his string,
Though from thy heights no more one Muse will wave
her wing.

1 This stanza was written in Turkey.

2 ["Beauties that need not fear a broken vow."— - MS.]

3 ["Long black hair, dark languishing eyes, clear olive complexions, and forms more graceful in motion than can be conceived by an Englishman, used to the drowsy, listless air of his countrywomen, added to the most becoming dress, and, at the same time, the most decent in the world, render a Spanish beauty irresistible."— -Lord Byron to his Mother, Aug. 1809.]

4 These stanzas were written in Castri (Delphos), at the foot of Parnassus, now called Alanuga (Liakura), Dec. 1809.

LXI.

Oft have I dream'd of Thee! whose glorious name
Who knows not, knows not man's divinest lore:
And now I view thee, 't is, alas! with shame
That I in feeblest accents must adore.
When I recount thy worshippers of yore
I tremble, and can only bend the knee;
Nor raise my voice, nor vainly dare to soar,
But gaze beneath thy cloudy canopy

In silent joy to think at last I look on Thee! 1

LXII.

Happier in this than mightiest bards have been, Whose fate to distant homes confined their lot, Shall I unmoved behold the hallow'd scene, Which others rave of, though they know it not? Though here no more Apollo haunts his grot, And thou, the Muses' seat, art now their grave, 2 Some gentle spirit still pervades the spot, Sighs in the gale, keeps silence in the cave, And glides with glassy foot o'er yon melodious wave.

"Upon Parnassus, going to the fountain of Delphi (Castri), in 1809, I saw a flight of twelve eagles (Hobhouse says they were vultures at least in conversation), and I seized the omen. On the day before, I composed the lines to Parnassus (in Childe Harold), and on beholding the birds, had a hope that Apollo had accepted my homage. I have at least had the name and fame of a poet, during the poetical period of life (from twenty to thirty); — whether it will last is another matter: but I have been a votary of the deity and the place, and am grateful for what he has done in my behalf, leaving the future in his hands, as I left the past. B. Diary, 1821.]

2 ["Casting the eye over the site of ancient Delphi, one cannot possibly imagine what has become of the walls of the numerous buildings which are mentioned in the history of its former magnificence, buildings which covered two miles of ground. With the exception of the few terraces or supporting walls, nothing now appears. The various robberies by Scylla, Nero, and Constantine, are inconsiderable; for the removal of the statues of bronze, and marble, and ivory, could not greatly affect