XXX.

Darkly, sternly, and all alone,

Minotti stood o'er the altar stone:

Madonna's face upon him shone,

Painted in heavenly hues above,
With eyes of light and looks of love;
And placed upon that holy shrine
To fix our thoughts on things divine,
When pictured there, we kneeling see

Her, and the boy-God on her knee,

Smiling sweetly on each

prayer

To heaven, as if to waft it there.

Still she smiled; even now she smiles,

Though slaughter streams along her aisles:
Minotti lifted his aged eye,

And made the sign of a cross with a sigh,

Then seized a torch which blazed thereby; And still he stood, while, with steel and flame, Inward and onward the Mussulman came.

XXXI.

The vaults beneath the mosaic stone

Contain'd the dead of ages gone;

Their names were on the graven floor,
But now illegible with gore;

The carved crests, and curious hues

The varied marble's veins diffuse,

Were smear'd, and slippery-stain'd, and strown
With broken swords, and helms o'erthrown:
There were dead above, and the dead below
Lay cold in many a coffin'd row;

You might see them piled in sable state,
By a pale light through a gloomy grate;
But War had enter'd their dark caves,
And stored along the vaulted graves
Her sulphurous treasures, thickly spread
In masses by the fleshless dead:
Here, throughout the siege, had been
The Christians' chiefest magazine;

To these a late form'd train now led,
Minotti's last and stern resource

Against the foe's o'erwhelming force.

XXXII.

The foe came on, and few remain

To strive, and those must strive in vain :

For lack of further lives, to slake

The thirst of vengeance now awake,

With barbarous blows they gash the dead,

And lop the already lifeless head,

And fell the statues from their niche,
And spoil the shrines of offerings rich,
And from each other's rude hands wrest

The silver vessels saints had bless'd.

To the high altar on they go;

Oh, but it made a glorious show!

On its table still behold

The cup of consecrated gold;

Massy and deep, a glittering prize,

Brightly it sparkles to plunderers' eyes:
That morn it held the holy wine,

Converted by Christ to his blood so divine,

Which his worshippers drank at the break of day,
To shrive their souls ere they join'd in the fray.
Still a few drops within it lay;

And round the sacred table glow
Twelve lofty lamps, in splendid row,
From the purest metal cast;

A spoil-the richest, and the last.

XXXIII.

So near they came, the nearest stretch'd

To

grasp the spoil he almost reach'd,

When old Minotti's hand

Touch'd with the torch the train

"Tis fired!

Spire, vaults, the shrine, the spoil, the slain,

The turban'd victors, the Christian band,
All that of living or dead remain,

Hurl'd on high with the shiver'd fane,
In one wild roar expired!

The shatter'd town-the walls thrown down-
The waves a moment backward bent-

The hills that shake, although unrent,
As if an earthquake pass'd—

The thousand shapeless things all driven
In cloud and flame athwart the heaven,
By that tremendous blast-

Proclaim'd the desperate conflict o'er

On that too long afflicted shore:
Up to the sky like rockets go

All that mingled there below:
Many a tall and goodly man,
Scorch'd and shrivell'd to a span,

When he fell to earth again

Like a cinder strew'd the plain:

Down the ashes shower like rain;

Some fell in the gulf, which received the sprinkles

With a thousand circling wrinkles;

Some fell on the shore, but, far away,
Scatter'd o'er the isthmus lay;
Christian or Moslem, which be they?
Let their mothers see and say!
When in cradled rest they lay,
And each nursing mother smiled
On the sweet sleep of her child,
Little deem'd she such a day
Would rend those tender limbs away.

Not the matrons that them bore

Could discern their offspring more;

That one moment left no trace

More of human form or face

Save a scatter'd scalp or bone:

And down came blazing rafters, strown Around, and many a falling stone,

Deeply dinted in the clay,

All blacken'd there and reeking lay.

All the living things that heard

That deadly earth shock disappear'd: The wild birds flew; the wild dogs fled,

And howling left the unburied dead; The camels from their keepers broke; The distant steer forsook the yoke—