Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 4.djvu/288

250 Like that Jerusalem which the Almighty He

Wept over, "but thou wouldst not;" as the bird

Gathers its young, I would have gathered thee

Beneath a parent pinion, hadst thou heard

My voice; but as the adder, deaf and fierce,

Against the breast that cherished thee was stirred

Thy venom, and my state thou didst amerce,

And doom this body forfeit to the fire.

Alas! how bitter is his country's curse

To him who for that country would expire,

But did not merit to expire by her,

And loves her, loves her even in her ire.

The day may come when she will cease to err,

The day may come she would be proud to have

The dust she dooms to scatter, and transfer

Of him, whom she denied a home, the grave.

But this shall not be granted; let my dust

Lie where it falls; nor shall the soil which gave

Me breath, but in her sudden fury thrust

Me forth to breathe elsewhere, so reassume

My indignant bones, because her angry gust

Forsooth is over, and repealed her doom;

No,—she denied me what was mine—my roof,

And shall not have what is not hers—my tomb.

Too long her arméd wrath hath kept aloof

The breast which would have bled for her, the heart

That beat, the mind that was temptation proof,