Classic Poem

WHAT mountain-echoes roll
Across the roughening main?
Is it the torrent's voice that shakes my soul?
Is it the wolf wild howling o'er the slain?
That torrent in its stormy might
Hath swept a thousand flags away,
That blithely danced in glory's light
Mocking the sun of yesterday.
Long o'er Biscaya's lonely wold
That war-wolf's howl, at midnight hour
Hath scared the watchers of the fold;
Now walks he forth at noon in vengeance to devour.

In justice walks he forth:
Before his red eye's glare
They shrink, the wasters of the smiling earth,
They bow themselves, they sicken with despair
Dash'd from their foul unholy grasp
The silver-winged Eagle lies,
Each tyrant draws one wildering gasp,
Curses his anguish once, and dies.
Then from Cantabria's cloudy height
Freedom in thunder spake to Spain,
Her pealing voice dispers'd the night
Of mist that long had hover'd o'er her mountain reign.

Doth yet one lingering war-note dwell
In arched grot or bowery dell,
Of that triumphant clarion blast
O'er rock, and copse, and torrent cast
From Ronceval's immortal fight;
That told how many a prowest knight,
Hurl'd headlong from his seat of pride,
Beneath thy grasp, Iberia, died?

Wake, Echo, from thy sleep of years!
Pour, long and loud, that solemn melody!
Let it arise like chanted orison
Toward heaven-gate. The holy work is done,
Britain hath wiped Iberia's tears
And Ronceval beheld the Christians' victory!