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Of these two creatures should be thus traced out

Almost like a reality-the one

To end in madness-both in misery.

PROMETHEUS.

I.

TITAN! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,

Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity's recompense?

A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of wo,

Which speaks but in its loneliness,

And then is jealous lets the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh

Until its voice is echoless.

II.

Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;
And the inexorable Heaven,

And the deaf tyranny of Fate,

The ruling principle of Hate,

Which for its pleasure doth create

The things it may annihilate,
Refused thee even the boon to die;

The wretched gift eternity

Was thine-and thou hast borne it well.

All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresee
But would not to appease him tell;
And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
And in his soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled

That in his hand the lightnings trembled.

III.

Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind;
But baffled as thou wert from high,

Still in thy patient energy,

In the endurance, and repulse

Of thine impenetrable Spirit

Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,

A mighty lesson we inherit:

Thou art a symbol and a sign

To Mortals of their fate and force;

Like thee, Man is in part divine,

A troubled stream from a pure sourcè;

And Man in portions can foresee

His own funereal destiny;

His wretchedness and his resistence,

And his sad unallied existence;
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself an equal to all woes,

And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry
Its own concenter'd recompense,

VOL. VI.-A a

250

Triumphant where it dares defy,
And making Death a Victory.

ROMANCE MUY DOLOROSO

DEL

SITIO Y TOMA DE ALHAMA.

The effect of the original Ballad (which existed both in Spanish and Arabic) was such that it was forbidden to be sung by the Moors, on pain of death within Granada.

A VERY MOURNFUL BALLAD

ON THE

SIEGE AND CONQUEST OF ALHAMA.

Which, in the Arabic language, is to the following purport.

1.

THE Moorish King rides up and down

Through Granada's royal town,

From Elzira's gates to those

Of Bivarambla on be goes.

Wo is me, Alhama!

2.

Letters to the monarch tell

How Alhama's city fell;

In the fire the scroll he threw,

And the messenger he slew.

Wo is me, Alhama!

3.

He quits his mule and mounts his horse, And through the street directs his course; Through the street of Zacatin

To the Alhambra spurring in.

Wo is me, Alhama!

4.

When the Alhambra walls be gained,
On the moment he ordained

That the trumpet straight should sound
With the silver clarion round.

Wo is me, Alhama!

5.

And when the hollow drums of war

Beat the loud alarm afar,

That the Moors of town and plain

Might answer to the martial strain,
Wo is me, Alhama!

6.

Then the Moors by this aware,

That bloody Mars recalled them there,
One by one, and two by two,

To a mighty squadron grew.

Wo is me, Alhama!

7.

Out then spake an aged Moor
In these words the king before,
"Wherefore call on us, oh king?
"What may mean this gathering?"
Wois me, Alhama!

8.

"Friends! ye have, alas! to know
Of a most disastrous blow,

That the Christians, stern and bold,
Have obtained Alhama's hold."

Wo is me, Alhama!

9.

Out then spoke old Alfaqui,

With his beard so white to see, "Good King! thou art justly served, "Good King! this thou hast deserved. Wo is me, Alhama!

10.

"By thee were slain, in evil hour, The Abencerrage, Granada's flower; And strangers were received by thee Of Cordova the Chivalry.

Wo is me, Alhama!

11.

"And for this, oh King! is sent

On thee a double chastisement,
Thee and thine, thy crown and realm,

One last wreck shall overwhelm.

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"He who holds no laws in awe,
He must perish by the law;
And Granada must be won,
And thyself with her undone."

Wo is me, Alhama!

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