Legend of the Blemished King And Other Poems

hen, lo ! from the 'wildered crowd, On a peak of the rock steps Schakhe, and calls to her sisters, loud :? " O sisters in nameless sorrow, baptised in a life of tears; Before you two paths lie open: behind you a thousand years Fade far in the dusky distance, one long, broad stream of blood, That flows by the wreck and ruin of sword and fire and flood! Before you two paths lie open: one leads where dangers lurk, And the pain and the dumb dishonour from the merciless hand of the Turk. Choose ye ! Will ye thread that pathway, prove false to the men ye love; Prove false to the children ye bore them; prove false to the God above ? Will ye sell yourselves to the spoilers of father and mother and child, Who butchered and then, like devils, at their cries for mercy smiled ? Do ye think of the thousands rotting, flung down in a ghastly heap Unblessed ; whose dust commingles in their last unhallowed sleep ? Do ye think of the blood, the sorrow, the wild, sky-rending cries, As the scarce-born babe was mangled to feast their fiendish eyes ? Do you think of the brute defilement when, full in the flare of day, Ye were robbed of your dear-prized honour, and made the Moselm's prey ? Will ye choose that path, O sisters ? 'Tis a path ye have often trod ; Or throw yourselves on the mercy of the great, all- powerful God ? What though He is veiled in silence, and behind our clouds grown dim ; If He come not dow...