Arkadi
Verdant are Candia's olives,
Yellow her fields of corn,
No vineyards are more fruitful,
No whiter sheep are shorn,
No land has lovelier vistas,
No land has clearer skies,
And far or near on isle or plain
No happier homes arise.
But now the leafy olives
Are lying all supine,
And crushed and matted on the earth
Is every purple vine,
The flocks have left the fields,
The corn is charred and dry,
The smoke of flaming villages
Rolls black against the sky;
For Turkish hordes are ranging
The country far and wide,
Nor blade of grass, nor living thing,
Survives that deadly tide.
On, on they moved, and hour by hour
Nearer and nearer came,
And nearer still to Arkadi
Rose each successive flame,
To Arkadi, where Gabriel
Stood lion-like at bay.
He might not seek, yet scorned to shun,
The fury of the fray.
His hair was long and gray;
His beard was snowy white;
Beneath his wrinkled brow
His eyes glowed darkly bright;
His robe of monkish black
Floated about his form,
As the cloudland draperies float around
The spirit of the storm.
Some said he was not reared
To a monk's inglorious ease,
For his majestic tread
Was learned beyond the seas,
Where that commanding form
Had faced the Turk before,
When his arm of might
In the fierce red light
Gleamed purple with Moslem gore.
With him was rugged Zagon,
He of the Thousand Hills:
Ne'er had the conquering Moslem
Drunk of their crystal rills.
He kept, as kept his fathers,
His native mountains free,
Obeyed no mandate but his own,
No law but liberty.
From those blue Sphakiote mountains
Down with his tribe he came,
When first the trampled island
Burst into wrathful flame;
On Turk and on Egyptian
Waged desultory war, —
In all the land there was not a brand
Had left so many a scar.
There, too, came young Camouilli
Of old Venetian blood.
Ah! where was his home ancestral
That towered o'er field and flood?
A mass of smouldering ruin!
The tomb of a murdered sire! —
What wonder his soul was glowing
With a mighty and quenchless ire?
And Manius of Suda,
A merchant of the town,
Demetrius the Athenian,
And Scharz the blacksmith brown,
And many a sturdy yeoman,
And many a mountaineer,
And many a monk, with cowl and robe
And crucifix, were there.
Then from Mustapha Pacha
The haughty summons came:
No choice he left his foemen
Save only death or shame.
And Gabriel returned him
The answer proud and stern:
" Whate'er thou hast of Arkadi
Thy red right hand must earn. "
So when the stars shone brightly,
And the winds blew underneath,
All slept the sleep of silence,
But some the sleep of death.
The sun has risen, the circling camps
Are all astir with life,
And on to the assault they move,
On to the deadly strife.
The turbaned mass swept round the hill,
Then, yelling, upward pressed.
Like sparks of fire the bayonets gleamed,
North, South, and East all sunset-streamed,
Like diamonds, at the West.
As from some cavern-like cloud
Leaps the red lightning forth,
Flash upon flash, and here and there
Smites forest-trees to earth:
So from that lofty crest
Down streamed the rapid fire,
And scattered through the ascending ranks
Death and confusion dire.
But thousands upon thousands
Came surging on behind,
And the foremost ranks were borne along
Like clouds before the wind:
They dashed against the whitened walls
Like waves against a rock,
Which, towering high mid stormy seas,
Defies their utmost shock.
They leaped to catch the windows,
But tumbled back in gore;
They struggled at the loopholes,
They thundered at the door.
But the hard iron-bossed beams
Yielded not to their ire,
And ever fiercer, deadlier grew
The Christians' ceaseless fire.
And thrice the Turks before it
Wavered and turned and fled,
But rallying half-way down the slope,
Came trampling o'er the dead.
At last their furious onslaught
Forced the door open wide,
And through the entrance in they poured
A mad, exultant tide.
Then all the spacious court-yard
Was filled with tossing heads,
And arms high waving in the air,
And groan and yell and shriek and cheer
Made such an awful discord there,
That Hell itself, that sound to hear,
Had yielded up each shape of fear
That wizard knows and dreads.
But still through all the deafening roar
Of musketry rose more and more
In one grand stormy stream.
For from the casements all around
Shot the red flashes, and the ground
Was strewn with dead. Each ghastly mound
Fresh victims climbed. No entrance found,
Their bayonets lurid gleam.
Crash go the doors! and on and on
They rush from room to room;
And louder peals each echoing cry
Of rage and pain and agony
From out the sulphurous gloom.
Zagon has fallen; never more
His native mountains rising o'er
The sun shall greet his eyes.
Camouilli by the hero's side,
With death-wounds gaping deep and wide,
In speechless agony lies.
Thus, reeling back, the Cretans fell
Before the Moslem throng,
That, like a foaming torrent, swept
All barriers along.
Yes, as a torrent whirls along
The slenderest wattled screen
Their desperate foemen on they swept,
And on, still on the Moslem kept;
They neared the magazine.
But what has checked that furious rush?
What dread sight meets their gaze?
Why blanches every swarthy cheek
With terror and amaze?
There in the centre of the room
Behold Gabriel stand.
His eyes are raised to heaven, and, lo!
A torch flames in his hand.
A strange high look was on his brow;
His eyes unearthly gleamed;
And every lineament aglow
With a grand triumph seemed.
Thrice round his head he waved that torch,
Then plunged it at his feet,
And rose to his full height, as though
To give death welcome meet.
A mighty crash shook heaven. The walls
Rose heavily in air,
And mangled limbs and volumed smoke
Mingled in chaos there.
Earth quaked to hear the awful sound,
The forest monarchs swayed.
Far, far around o'er all the plain
Showered the dense volcanic rain,
The Moslem remnant fled amain,
All pallid and dismayed.
Long shall Mustapha Pacha
Bewail his slaughtered men,
For such another gallant host
He ne'er shall lead again.
And where the Balkan torrents
In turbid fury roar,
And where the Nile's dark waters
Sweep onward to the shore,
Where Adrianople's roses
Bloom bright for many a mile,
Where in the East reposes
The Cyprian goddess' isle,
Through all the broad dominions
That own the Sultan's sway,
On land and sea great grief shall be
For the deed done that day.
Well may ye grieve, proud Moslem,
Well may ye weep and wail,
For all through Candia's valleys
Has gone the stirring tale.
The bold feel treble valor,
The wavering are stayed,
The weak grow strong, the sluggards wake
And grasp for martyred Gabriel's sake
The idly-rusting blade.
No more the land of Minos
Your cursed dominion hails;
Henceforth a home of freedom
Shall greet the Orient gales.
The paradise Levantine,
The godlike heroes' isle,
Set in the wave without a slave,
Once more shall bloom and smile.
Once more united Greece shall be,
First in the van of liberty,
And when of old Thermopylae
Is told the glorious fray,
With equal rapture shall they dwell
Upon the name of Gabriel,
And with as great a pride shall tell
Of the deed done that day.
Yellow her fields of corn,
No vineyards are more fruitful,
No whiter sheep are shorn,
No land has lovelier vistas,
No land has clearer skies,
And far or near on isle or plain
No happier homes arise.
But now the leafy olives
Are lying all supine,
And crushed and matted on the earth
Is every purple vine,
The flocks have left the fields,
The corn is charred and dry,
The smoke of flaming villages
Rolls black against the sky;
For Turkish hordes are ranging
The country far and wide,
Nor blade of grass, nor living thing,
Survives that deadly tide.
On, on they moved, and hour by hour
Nearer and nearer came,
And nearer still to Arkadi
Rose each successive flame,
To Arkadi, where Gabriel
Stood lion-like at bay.
He might not seek, yet scorned to shun,
The fury of the fray.
His hair was long and gray;
His beard was snowy white;
Beneath his wrinkled brow
His eyes glowed darkly bright;
His robe of monkish black
Floated about his form,
As the cloudland draperies float around
The spirit of the storm.
Some said he was not reared
To a monk's inglorious ease,
For his majestic tread
Was learned beyond the seas,
Where that commanding form
Had faced the Turk before,
When his arm of might
In the fierce red light
Gleamed purple with Moslem gore.
With him was rugged Zagon,
He of the Thousand Hills:
Ne'er had the conquering Moslem
Drunk of their crystal rills.
He kept, as kept his fathers,
His native mountains free,
Obeyed no mandate but his own,
No law but liberty.
From those blue Sphakiote mountains
Down with his tribe he came,
When first the trampled island
Burst into wrathful flame;
On Turk and on Egyptian
Waged desultory war, —
In all the land there was not a brand
Had left so many a scar.
There, too, came young Camouilli
Of old Venetian blood.
Ah! where was his home ancestral
That towered o'er field and flood?
A mass of smouldering ruin!
The tomb of a murdered sire! —
What wonder his soul was glowing
With a mighty and quenchless ire?
And Manius of Suda,
A merchant of the town,
Demetrius the Athenian,
And Scharz the blacksmith brown,
And many a sturdy yeoman,
And many a mountaineer,
And many a monk, with cowl and robe
And crucifix, were there.
Then from Mustapha Pacha
The haughty summons came:
No choice he left his foemen
Save only death or shame.
And Gabriel returned him
The answer proud and stern:
" Whate'er thou hast of Arkadi
Thy red right hand must earn. "
So when the stars shone brightly,
And the winds blew underneath,
All slept the sleep of silence,
But some the sleep of death.
The sun has risen, the circling camps
Are all astir with life,
And on to the assault they move,
On to the deadly strife.
The turbaned mass swept round the hill,
Then, yelling, upward pressed.
Like sparks of fire the bayonets gleamed,
North, South, and East all sunset-streamed,
Like diamonds, at the West.
As from some cavern-like cloud
Leaps the red lightning forth,
Flash upon flash, and here and there
Smites forest-trees to earth:
So from that lofty crest
Down streamed the rapid fire,
And scattered through the ascending ranks
Death and confusion dire.
But thousands upon thousands
Came surging on behind,
And the foremost ranks were borne along
Like clouds before the wind:
They dashed against the whitened walls
Like waves against a rock,
Which, towering high mid stormy seas,
Defies their utmost shock.
They leaped to catch the windows,
But tumbled back in gore;
They struggled at the loopholes,
They thundered at the door.
But the hard iron-bossed beams
Yielded not to their ire,
And ever fiercer, deadlier grew
The Christians' ceaseless fire.
And thrice the Turks before it
Wavered and turned and fled,
But rallying half-way down the slope,
Came trampling o'er the dead.
At last their furious onslaught
Forced the door open wide,
And through the entrance in they poured
A mad, exultant tide.
Then all the spacious court-yard
Was filled with tossing heads,
And arms high waving in the air,
And groan and yell and shriek and cheer
Made such an awful discord there,
That Hell itself, that sound to hear,
Had yielded up each shape of fear
That wizard knows and dreads.
But still through all the deafening roar
Of musketry rose more and more
In one grand stormy stream.
For from the casements all around
Shot the red flashes, and the ground
Was strewn with dead. Each ghastly mound
Fresh victims climbed. No entrance found,
Their bayonets lurid gleam.
Crash go the doors! and on and on
They rush from room to room;
And louder peals each echoing cry
Of rage and pain and agony
From out the sulphurous gloom.
Zagon has fallen; never more
His native mountains rising o'er
The sun shall greet his eyes.
Camouilli by the hero's side,
With death-wounds gaping deep and wide,
In speechless agony lies.
Thus, reeling back, the Cretans fell
Before the Moslem throng,
That, like a foaming torrent, swept
All barriers along.
Yes, as a torrent whirls along
The slenderest wattled screen
Their desperate foemen on they swept,
And on, still on the Moslem kept;
They neared the magazine.
But what has checked that furious rush?
What dread sight meets their gaze?
Why blanches every swarthy cheek
With terror and amaze?
There in the centre of the room
Behold Gabriel stand.
His eyes are raised to heaven, and, lo!
A torch flames in his hand.
A strange high look was on his brow;
His eyes unearthly gleamed;
And every lineament aglow
With a grand triumph seemed.
Thrice round his head he waved that torch,
Then plunged it at his feet,
And rose to his full height, as though
To give death welcome meet.
A mighty crash shook heaven. The walls
Rose heavily in air,
And mangled limbs and volumed smoke
Mingled in chaos there.
Earth quaked to hear the awful sound,
The forest monarchs swayed.
Far, far around o'er all the plain
Showered the dense volcanic rain,
The Moslem remnant fled amain,
All pallid and dismayed.
Long shall Mustapha Pacha
Bewail his slaughtered men,
For such another gallant host
He ne'er shall lead again.
And where the Balkan torrents
In turbid fury roar,
And where the Nile's dark waters
Sweep onward to the shore,
Where Adrianople's roses
Bloom bright for many a mile,
Where in the East reposes
The Cyprian goddess' isle,
Through all the broad dominions
That own the Sultan's sway,
On land and sea great grief shall be
For the deed done that day.
Well may ye grieve, proud Moslem,
Well may ye weep and wail,
For all through Candia's valleys
Has gone the stirring tale.
The bold feel treble valor,
The wavering are stayed,
The weak grow strong, the sluggards wake
And grasp for martyred Gabriel's sake
The idly-rusting blade.
No more the land of Minos
Your cursed dominion hails;
Henceforth a home of freedom
Shall greet the Orient gales.
The paradise Levantine,
The godlike heroes' isle,
Set in the wave without a slave,
Once more shall bloom and smile.
Once more united Greece shall be,
First in the van of liberty,
And when of old Thermopylae
Is told the glorious fray,
With equal rapture shall they dwell
Upon the name of Gabriel,
And with as great a pride shall tell
Of the deed done that day.
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