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CANTO III.

I.

THE fight was o'er; the flashing through the gloom,
Which robes the cannon as he wings a tomb,

Had ceased; and sulphury vapours upward driven

Had left the earth, and but polluted heaven:

The rattling roar which rung in every volley
Had left the echos to their melancholy;

No more they shrieked their horror, boom for boom;
The strife was done, the vanquished had their doom;
The mutineers were crushed, dispersed, or ta'en,
Or lived to deem the happiest were the slain.
Few, few escaped, and these were hunted o'er

The isle they loved beyond their native shore.

No further home was their's, it seemed, on earth,

Once renegades to that which gave them birth;

Tracked like wild beasts, like them they sought the wild, As to a mother's bosom flies the child;

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But vainly wolves and lions seek their den,

And still more vainly, men escape from men.

II.

Beneath a rock whose jutting base protrudes
Far over ocean in his fiercest moods,

When scaling his enormous crag, the wave

Is hurled down headlong like the foremost brave,
And falls back on the foaming crowd behind,

Which fight beneath the banners of the wind,
But now at rest, a little remnant drew

Together, bleeding, thirsty, faint and few

;

But still their weapons in their hands, and still
With something of the pride of former will,

As men not all unused to meditate,

And strive much more than wonder at their fate.

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Their present lot was what they had foreseen,

And dared as what was likely to have been;

Yet still the lingering hope, which deemed their lot

Not pardoned, but unsought for or forgot,

Or trusted that, if sought, their distant caves

Might still be missed amidst the world of waves,
Had weaned their thoughts in part from what they saw

And felt, the vengeance of their country's law.

Their sea-green isle, their guilt-won paradise,
No more could shield their virtue or their vice:
Their better feelings, if such were, were thrown
Back on themselves,—their sins remained alone.
Proscribed even in their second country, they
Were lost; in vain the world before them lay;
All outlets seemed secured. Their new allies
Had fought and bled in mutual sacrifice;
But what availed the club and spear and arm
Of Hercules, against the sulphury charm,
The magic of the thunder, which destroyed
The warrior ere his strength could be employed?

Dug, like a spreading pestilence, the grave

No less of human bravery than the brave !*
Their own scant numbers acted all the few
Against the many oft will dare and do;

But though the choice seems native to die free,
Even Greece can boast but one Thermopylæ,
Till now, when she has forged her broken chain
Back to a sword, and dies and lives again!

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Archidamus, King of Sparta, and son of Agesilaus, when he saw a machine invented for the casting of stones and darts, exclaimed that it was the Grave of Valour." The same story has been told of some knights on the first application of Gunpowder; but the original anecdote is in Plutarch.

D

III

Beside the jutting rock the few appeared,
Like the last remnant of the red-deer's herd;
Their eyes were feverish, and their aspect worn,
But still the hunter's blood was on their horn.
A little stream came tumbling from the height,
And straggling into ocean as it might,

Its bounding chrystal frolicked in the ray,

And gushed from cleft to crag with saltless spray ;
Close on the wild, wide ocean, yet as pure

And fresh as innocence and more secure,

Its silver torrent glittered o'er the deep,
As the shy chamois' eye o'erlooks the steep,

While far below the vast and sullen swell

Of ocean's Alpine azure rose and fell.

To this young spring they rushed,—all feelings first
Absorbed in Passion's and in Nature's thirst,-

Drank as they do who drink their last, and threw

Their arms aside to revel in its dew;

Cooled their scorched throats, and washed the gory stains From wounds whose only bandage might be chains;

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Then, when their drought was quenched, looked sadly round, As wondering how so many still were found

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