Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.
By The Siege of Valencia (1823). I. Ballad: “Thou hast not been”Felicia Dorothea Hemans (1793–1835)
“T
At the pouring of the wine;
Men bear not from the hall of song
A mien so dark as thine!
There’s blood upon thy shield,
There’s dust upon thy plume,
Thou hast brought from some disastrous field
That brow of wrath and gloom!”
Maiden, it well may be!
We have sent the streams from our battle-field
All darken’d to the sea:
We have given the founts a stain,
Midst their woods of ancient pine;
And the ground is wet—but not with rain,
Deep dyed—but not with wine!
We have been in war-array,
And the noblest blood of Christian Spain
Hath bathed her soil to-day.
I have seen the strong man die,
And the stripling meet his fate,
Where the mountain-winds go sounding by
In the Roncesvalles’ Strait.
There are helms and lances cleft;
And they that moved at morn elate
On a bed of heath are left!
There’s many a fair young face
Which the war-steed hath gone o’er;
At many a board there is kept a place
For those that come no more!”
If woe like this must be!
Hast thou seen a youth with an eagle-crest,
And a white plume waving free?
With his proud quick-flashing eye,
And his mien of kingly state?
Doth he come from where the swords flash’d high
In the Roncesvalles’ Strait?”
I saw, and mark’d him well:
For nobly on his steed he sate,
When the pride of manhood fell.
But it is not youth which turns
From the field of spears again;
For the boy’s high heart too wildly burns
Till it rests amidst the slain!”
The lovely and the brave:
Oh, none could look on his joyous brow,
And think upon the grave!
Dark, dark perchance the day
Hath been with valour’s fate;
But he is on his homeward way,
From the Roncesvalles’ Strait!”
And o’er his graceful head;
And the war-horse will not wake him now,
Though it browse his greensward bed.
I have seen the stripling die,
And the strong man meet his fate,
Where the mountain-winds go sounding by
In the Roncesvalles’ Strait!”