Читать книгу Ismael; an oriental tale. With other poems - Edward Bulwer Lytton Baron Lytton - Страница 14

Now pensive midnight’s sable mantle falls

O’er stately Tauris’ proud imbattled walls;

And there dark Desolation’s fix’d his throne;

No sound is there, save sigh or plaintive groan:—220

There drops the widow’s tear—there heaves the sigh

Of mourning sire—there sounds the orphan’s cry—

And there dark Azrail[7] sits, and grimly waves His sable pinions o’er a thousand graves; Yet e’en his rugged soul is tir’d—his hand Would fain let drop his all-destructive brand— Would gladly spread his deadly plumes, to fly From such a scene of desolate misery.

For when Alvante’s brother claim’d a throne,

Which none but Ismael had the right to own;230

The tyrant, wak’ning from inglorious ease,

Rush’d to the battle, like the northern breeze:—

They fought! and young Moratcham’s lesser band

Fled in dismay before his brother’s hand.

But wo to Tauris’ chiefs!—for, there return’d,

With vengeful rage the haughty victor burn’d:

For they had help’d to place the daring brand,

Of red Rebellion, in Moratcham’s hand.

And, like some roaring whirlwind’s sweeping path,

That tears whole forests with its rabid wrath;240

Or, like some demon’s all-destroying form,

That wings the blast, and rides the gath’ring storm:

So fierce Alvante saw each coming day,

The luckless chiefs of Tauris sweep away.

Whence is that piercing scream?—Oh, turn thine eye

To view that scene of more than misery!

Yon maiden lov’d yon lifeless youth; he fell

Beneath Alvante’s rage,—the rest too well

That scream has told;—wide floats her streaming hair,

As if to ask compassion of the air,250

And her dark eye-balls’ wilder’d, frenzied roll,

Tell all the pangs that rend her madd’ning soul.

She press’d her lips to his, in vain to breathe

Life into lips, where all is death beneath;—

She feels his heart, for ever cold its glow,

And its high bound of rapture, silenc’d now!

And up she springs, and laughs—she laughs—but there

Burst forth the horrid laughter of Despair.

Vain, vain is reason, life against the stroke,

Dead on her love she falls—her faithful heart is broke.260