Page:The complete poems of Emily Bronte.djvu/235

Rh 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.