Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/68

36   Torn with shot and pierced with lances, bleeding slow his life away; But, as tenderly before him the lorn Ximena knelt, She saw the Northern eagle shining on his pistol-belt.

With a stifled cry of horror straight she turned away her head; With a sad and bitter feeling looked she back upon her dead; But she heard the youth’s low moaning, and his struggling breath of pain, And she raised the cooling water to his parching lips again.

Whispered low the dying soldier, pressed her hand and faintly smiled; Was that pitying face his mother’s? did she watch beside her child? All his stranger words with meaning her woman’s heart supplied; With her kiss upon his forehead, “Mother!” murmured he, and died!

“A bitter curse upon them, poor boy, who led thee forth, From some gentle, sad-eyed mother, weeping, lonely, in the North!” Spake the mournful Mexic woman, as she laid him with her dead, And turned to soothe the living, and bind the wounds which bled.

Look forth once more, Ximena! “Like a cloud before the wind Rolls the battle down the mountains, leaving blood and death behind; Ah! they plead in vain for mercy; in the dust the wounded strive; Hide your faces, holy angels! O thou Christ of God, forgive!”

Sink, O Night, among thy mountains! let the cool, gray shadows fall; Dying brothers, fighting demons, drop thy curtain over all! Through the thickening winter twilight, wide apart the battle rolled, In its sheath the sabre rested, and the cannon’s lips grew cold.

But the noble Mexic women still their holy task pursued, Through that long, dark night of sorrow, worn and faint and lacking food. Over weak and suffering brothers, with a tender care they hung, And the dying foeman blessed them in a strange and Northern tongue.

Not wholly lost, O Father! is this evil world of ours; Upward, through its blood and ashes, spring afresh the Eden flowers; From its smoking hell of battle, Love and Pity send their prayer, And still thy white-winged angels hover dimly in our air!

day is closing dark and cold,
 * With roaring blast and sleety showers;

And through the dusk the lilacs wear
 * The bloom of snow, instead of flowers.

I turn me from the gloom without,
 * To ponder o’er a tale of old;

A legend of the age of Faith,
 * By dreaming monk or abbess told.

On Tintoretto’s canvas lives
 * That fancy of a loving heart,

In graceful lines and shapes of power,
 * And hues immortal as his art.

In Provence (so the story runs)
 * There lived a lord, to whom, as slave,

A peasant-boy of tender years
 * The chance of trade or conquest gave.

Forth-looking from the castle tower,
 * Beyond the hills with almonds dark,