The Complete Poems of Emily Brontë/On the Fall of Zalona
L
ON THE FALL OF ZALONA
All blue and bright in golden light
The morn comes marching on,
And now Zalona's steeples white
Glow golden in the sun.
This day might be a festal day;
The streets are crowded all,
And emerald flags stream broad and gay
From turret, tower and wall.
And hark! how music evermore
Is sounding in the sky;
The deep bells boom, the cannon roar,
The trumpets sound on high.
The deep bells boom, the deep bells clash,
Upon the reeling air,
The cannon with unceasing crash
Make answer far and near.
What do these brazen tongues proclaim?
What joyous fête begun,
What offering to our country's fame,
What noble victory won?
Go, ask that solitary sire
Laid in his house alone;
His silent hearth without a fire,
His sons and daughters gone.
Go, ask those children in the street
Beside their mother's door;
Waiting to hear the lingering feet
That they shall hear no more.
Ask those pale soldiers round the gate
With famine-kindled eye.
They say, ' Zalona celebrates
The day that she must die.'
The charger by his manger tied
Has wasted many a day;
Yet ere the spur hath touched his side,
Behold he sinks away!
And hungry dogs with wolflike cry
Unburied corpses tear,
While their gaunt masters gaze and sigh
And scarce the feast forbear.
Now, look down from Zalona's wall;
There war the unwearied foe;
If ranks beneath the cannon fall,
New ranks for ever grow.
And many a week, unbroken thus
Their troops our ramparts hem;
And for each man that fights for us
A hundred fights for them!
Courage and right and spotless Truth
Were pitched 'gainst traitorous crime;
We offered all, our age, our youth,
Our brave men in their prime.
And all have failed! the fervent prayers,
The trust in heavenly aid;
Valour and Faith and sealèd tears,
That would not mourn the dead.
Lips, that did breathe no murmuring word;
Hearts, that did ne'er complain;
Though vengeance held a sheathèd sword
And martyrs bled in vain.
Alas, alas, the myrtle bowers
By blighting blasts destroyed!
Alas, the lily's withered flowers
That leave our garden void!
Unfolds o'er tower, and waves o'er height,
A sheet of crimson sheen,
Is it the setting sun's red light
That stains our standard green?
Heaven help us in this awful hour!
For now might Faith decay.
Now might we doubt God's guardian power
And curse instead of pray.
He will not even let us die,
Not let us die at home;
The foe must see our soldiers fly
As they had feared the tomb!
Because we dare not stay to gain
Those longed-for, glorious graves,
We dare not shrink from slavery's chain
To leave our children slaves!
But when this scene of awful woe
Has neared its final close,
As God forsook our armies, so
May He forsake our foes!
February 24, 1843.