Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/157



ʿ So he savoured gall and honey,

One or other all men tasted;

Fear he rode without companion

Save his deep-notched blade of Yemen.

Many warriors when the night fell

Journeyed on until the dawning,

Halted keen of eye and sword-blade,

Sword-blades flashing like the lightning;

They were tasting sips of slumber,

They were nodding—thou appearest

And they scatter at thy face!

Vengeance we have wreaked upon them,

None escaped us but a few;

And if Hudheyl broke his sword-blade

Many notches Hudheyl won!

Oft on rugged rocks he made them

Kneel where hoofs are worn with running,

Oft at dawn he fell upon them,

Slaughtered, plundered, and despoiled.

Valiant, never tired by evil,

One whose sword drinks deep the first draught,

Deep again the blood of foemen,

Hudheyl has been burned by me.

Wine no longer is forbidden,

Hard the toil that made it lawful!

Reach me, Sawâd son of ʿAmru,

Reach the cup—my strength is wearied

With the winning of revenge.

Drink to Hudheyl we have given

From the dregs of Death's own goblet—

Shame, dishonour, and disgrace.

Over Hudheyl laugh hyenas,

Grin the wolves beside their corpses,

And the vultures, treading on them,

Flap their wings, too gorged to fly."

The poem will summon up recollections of the Coronach over Duncan in the Lady of the Lake, and the deed of vengeance in Cadyow Castle. But the pale cheek, glaring eyeballs, and bloody hands of Bothwellhaugh, as he springs from his horse and dashes his carbine to the ground, are melodramatic compared with the consuming passion of revenge in the terrible Arab fresh from that cleft of rocks below Salʿ and the sight of his slaughtered kinsman, and glancing from his downcast eyes the poisoned glance of the hooded asp. We have here no "spectre gliding by," as in the Scotch tale, to watch the