The Guerilla Leader's Vow

My battle-vow!--no minster walls
Gave back the burning word,
Nor cross nor shrine the low deep tone
Of smother’d vengeance heard:
But the ashes of a ruin’d home
Thrill’d as it sternly rose,
With the mingling voice of blood that shook
The midnight’s dark repose.

I breathed it not o’er kingly tombs,
But where my children lay,
And the startled vulture at my step
Soar’d from their precious clay.
I stood amidst my dead alone--
I kiss’d their lips--I pour’d,
In the strong silence of that hour,
My spirit on my sword.

The roof-tree fallen, the smouldering floor,
The blacken’d threshold-stone,
The bright hair torn, and soil’d with blood,
Whose fountain was my own--
These, and the everlasting hills,
Bore witness that wild night;
Before them rose th’ avenger’s soul
In crush’d affection’s might.

The stars, the searching stars of heaven,
With keen looks would upbraid
If from my heart the fiery vow,
Sear’d on it then, could fade.
They have no cause! Go, ask the streams
That by my paths have swept,
The red waves that unstain’d were born--
How hath my faith been kept?

And other eyes are on my soul,
That never, never close,
The sad, sweet glances of the lost--
They leave me no repose.
Haunting my night-watch midst the rocks,
And by the torrent’s foam,
Through the dark-rolling mists they shine,
Full, full of love and home!

Alas! the mountain eagle’s heart,
When wrong’d, may yet find rest;
Scorning the place made desolate,
He seeks another nest.
But I--your soft looks wake the thirst
That wins no quenching rain;
Ye drive me back, my beautiful!
To the stormy fight again.