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(From Wratislaw)
WHERE now the Servian and the Turk, | |
| Born foes, as slave and master are, | |
| Are at their grim old murderous work, | |
| Grappling in most unequal war, | |
| Six hundred years ago, or more, | 5 |
| The land was wasted, as to-day, | |
| Overrun, as when the shore gives way | |
| And the wild waves devour the shore, | |
| By Tartar tribes as wild as they, | |
| The barbarous horde of Genghis Khan, | 10 |
| Who scourged mankind as never man | |
| Before or since, as if he were | |
| Hell-sent to pitch his dark pavilions | |
| Upon the grave of slaughtered millions, | |
| And make the earth a sepulchre! | 15 |
| Down from the steppes of Tartary | |
| His countless thousands swept for years,— | |
| His long-haired horsemen with their spears. | |
| His bowmen with their arrows keen; | |
| Such pitiless fiends were never seen | 20 |
| Till then, and worst of all was he, | |
| Destruction’s self, whose iron tread | |
| Shook kingdoms: peaceful peoples lay | |
| Secure before him in Cathay; | |
| He passed that way and they were dead! | 25 |
| Across the swift, swollen winter rivers, | |
| Across the hot, parched summer sands, | |
| With bended bows and bristling quivers, | |
| And spears and scimitars in their hands, | |
| Rushed Tartar, Mongol, Turkoman, | 30 |
| To do the bidding of Genghis Khan,— | |
| Through Russia, Poland, down to where | |
| Morava is; they halted there. | |
| Before they came there was—if not | |
| Perpetual peace, which nowhere reigns, | 35 |
| So darkly Nature shapes our ends— | |
| There still were times when men forgot | |
| They had been foes, and might be friends, | |
| Having the same blood in their veins. | |
| Princes and peoples prospered. Now— | 40 |
| How do we track the savage sea, | |
| When its spent waves no longer roar, | |
| But by their ravage of the shore | |
| Whose once tall cliffs have ceased to be? | |
| Such was the track of Genghis Khan, | 45 |
| Who from his boyhood overran | |
| The lands, and made their rulers bow | |
| To his imperious will or whim, | |
| As if the world belonged to him. | |
| Temples and towers were trampled down, | 50 |
| Were pillaged, and were set on fire; | |
| Pagoda, mosque, and Christian spire, | |
| The great walled city, little town, | |
| The herdsman’s hut, the monarch’s hall,— | |
| He pillaged and destroyed them all: * * * * * | 55 |
| The work of death was never done, | |
| For everywhere along their track | |
| Were flights of vultures; everywhere | |
| The wolves came trooping from their lair,— | |
| Came famished, and went glutted back. | 60 |
| The smoke of battle dimmed the sun, | |
| And darkness like a funeral pall | |
| Was on the ruins,—all were black, | |
| Save when the embers smouldered red: | |
| It was as if the Earth were dead, | 65 |
| And they heaped ashes on her head! | |
| They halted in Morava. Nay, | |
| They were defeated there and then, | |
| By Slavic chiefs and Slavic men,— | |
| Warriors more desperate than they, | 70 |
| Whose spears and lances cleft their way | |
| To where their horsemen were at bay, | |
| And horse and rider rolled in dust; | |
| And whose sharp swords with lightning thrust, | |
| Ringing on helmet, armor, shield, | 75 |
| Pierced, clove, until they turned and fled, | |
| And left them masters of the field | |
| Piled with a hundred thousand dead! | |
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