Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry.
Volume IX. Tragedy: Humor. 1904. | | | | Poems of Tragedy: III. The Orient | | The Sack of the City | | Victor Hugo (1802–1885) |
| | Anonymous translation from the French
THY will, O King, is done! Lighting but to consume, | |
| The roar of the fierce flames drowned even the shouts and shrieks; | |
| Reddening each roof, like some day-dawn of bloody doom, | |
| Seemed they in joyous flight to dance above their wrecks. | |
| |
| Slaughter his thousand giant arms hath tossed on high, | 5 |
| Fell fathers, husbands, wives, beneath his streaming steel; | |
| Prostrate the palaces huge tombs of fire lie, | |
| While gathering overhead the vultures scream and wheel. | |
| |
| Died the pale mothers;—and the virgins, from their arms, | |
| O Caliph, fiercely torn, bewailed their young years’ blight; | 10 |
| With stabs and kisses fouled, all their yet quivering charms | |
| At our fleet coursers’ heels were dragged in mocking flight. | |
| |
| Lo, where the city lies mantled in pall of death! | |
| Lo, where thy mighty arm hath passed, all things must bend! | |
| As the priests prayed, the sword stopped their accursèd breath,— | 15 |
| Vainly their sacred book for shield did they extend. | |
| |
| Some infants yet survived, and the unsated steel | |
| Still drinks the life-blood of each whelp of Christian hound. | |
| To kiss thy sandal’s foot, O King, thy people kneel, | |
| With golden circlet to thy glorious ankle bound. | 20 | | | |
|
|
