Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 4.djvu/246

208 By day and night through field and flood,

Stained with his own and subjects' blood;

For thousands fell that flight to aid:

And not a voice was heard to upbraid

Ambition in his humbled hour,

When Truth had nought to dread from Power

His horse was slain, and Gieta gave

His own—and died the Russians' slave.

This, too, sinks after many a league

Of well-sustained, but vain fatigue;

And in the depth of forests darkling,

The watch-fires in the distance sparkling—

The beacons of surrounding foes—

A King must lay his limbs at length.

Are these the laurels and repose

For which the nations strain their strength?

They laid him by a savage tree,

In outworn Nature's agony;

His wounds were stiff, his limbs were stark;

The heavy hour was chill and dark;

The fever in his blood forbade

A transient slumber's fitful aid:

And thus it was; but yet through all,

Kinglike the monarch bore his fall,

And made, in this extreme of ill,

His pangs the vassals of his will: