Why should he know the tortures of the brave?
Why fruitless sorrows bend him to the grave?
Nor shalt thou e’er be told, my bridal fair,
What silent pangs these panting vitals tear,
But blooming still the patient hours employ
On the blind hope of future scenes of joy.
Now haste, ye fiends of death; the sire of day
In absent slumber gives your malice way;
While fainter light these livid flames supply,
And short-lived thousands learn of me to die.
He ceased not speaking; when the yell of war
Drowns all their death songs in a hideous jar;
The cries rebounding from the hillsides pour,
And wolves and tigers catch the distant roar.
Now more concordant all their voices join,
And round the plain they form the festive line;
When, to the music of the dismal din,
Indignant Zamor bids the dance begin.
Dim through the shadowy fires each changing form
Moves like a cloud before an evening storm,
When o’er the moon’s pale face and starry plain
The shifting shades lead on their broken train;
The mingling tribes their mazy gambols tread,
Till the last groan proclaims the victims dead,
Then part the smoky flesh, enjoy the feast
And lose their labors in oblivious rest.
Soon as the western hills announced the morn,
And falling fires were scarcely seen to burn,
Grimm’d by the horrors of the dreadful night,
The hosts woke fiercer for the promised fight;
And dark and silent through the frowning grove,
The different tribes beneath their standards move.
Meantime the solar king collects from far
His martial bands to meet the expected war,
Camps on the confines of an eastern plain
That skirts the steep rough limit of his reign;
He trains their ranks, their pliant force combines,
To close in columns or extend in lines,
To wheel, change front, in broken files dispart
And draw new strength from all the warrior’s art.
But now the rising sun relumes the plain
And calls to arms the well-accustom’d train.
High in the front imperial Capac strode
In fair effulgence like the beaming god;
A golden girdle bound his snowy vest,
A mimic sun hung sparkling on his breast;
The lautu’s horned wreath his temples twined,
The bow, the quiver shade his waist behind;
Raised high in air his golden sceptre burn’d,
And hosts surrounding trembled as he turn’d.
O’er eastern hills he cast his watchful eye,
Through the broad breaks that lengthen down the sky;
In whose blue clefts the sloping pathways bend,
Where annual floods from melting snows descend.
Now dry and deep, they lead from every height
The savage files that headlong rush to fight;
They throng and thicken through the smoky air,
And every breach pours down the dusky war.
So when a hundred streams explore their way
Down the same slopes, convolving to the sea,
They boil, they bend, they force their floods amain,
Swell o’er obstructing crags and sweep the plain.
Capac beholds and waits the coming shock,
As for the billows waits the storm-beat rock;
And while for fight his ardent troops prepare,
Thus through the ranks he breathes the soul of war.
Ye tribes that flourish in the sun’s mild reign,
Long have your flocks adorn’d the peaceful plain,
As o’er the realm his smiles persuasive flow’d
And conquer’d all without the stain of blood;
But lo, at last that wild infuriate band
With savage war demands your happy land.
Beneath the dark immeasurable host,
Descending, swarming, how the crags are lost!
Already now their ravening eyes behold
Your star-bright temples and your gates of gold;
And to their gods in fancied goblets pour
The warm libation of your children’s gore.
Move then to vengeance, meet the sons of blood,
Led by this arm and lighted by that god;
The strife is fierce, your fanes and fields the prize;
The warrior conquers or the infant dies.
Fill’d with his fire, the troops in squared array
Wait the wild hordes loose huddling to the fray;
Their pointed arrows, rising on the bow,
Look up the sky and chide the lagging foe.
Dread Zamor leads the homicidious train,
Moves from the clefts and stretches o’er the plain.
He gives the shriek; the deep convulsing sound
The hosts reecho, and the hills around
Retain the rending tumult; all the air
Clangs in the conflict of the clashing war.
But firm undaunted as a shelvy strand
That meets the surge, the bold Peruvians stand,
With steady aim the sounding bowstring ply,
And showers of arrows thicken through the sky;
When each grim host, in closer conflict join’d,
Clench the dire ax and cast the bow behind;
Through broken ranks sweep wide their slaughtering course,
Now struggle back, now sidelong sway the force.
Here from grim chiefs is lopt the grisly head;
All gride the dying, all deface the dead;
There scattering o’er the field in thin array,
Man tugs with man, and clubs with axes play;
With broken shafts they follow and they fly,
And yells and groans and shouts invade the sky;
Round all the shatter’d groves the ground is strow’d
With sever’d limbs and corses bathed in blood.
Long raged the strife; and where, on either side
A friend, a father or a brother died,
No trace remain’d of what he was before,
Mangled with horrid wounds and black with gore.
Now the Peruvians, in collected might,
With one wide stroke had wing’d the savage flight;
But their bright godhead, in his midday race,
With glooms unusual veil’d his radiant face,
Quencht all his beams, though cloudless, as in pain,
To view from heaven the havoc of the plain;
The walking stars, rejoicing at the sight,
Peep out and gem the anticipated night;
Day-birds and beasts of light to covert fly,
And owls and wolves begin their evening cry.
The astonisht Inca marks, with wild surprise,
Dead chills on earth, no cloud in all the skies,
His host o’ershaded in the field of blood,
Gored by his foes, deserted by his god.
Mute with amaze, they cease the war to wage,
Gaze on their leaders and forget their rage;
When pious Capac to the listening crowd
Raised high his wand and pour’d his voice aloud:
Peruvians hold! Our god forsakes the plain,
Nor saves his children nor beholds them slain?
Fly! speed your course, regain the guardian town;
Safe in our walls we’ll deprecate his frown,
And seek returning grace, denied us here;
Haste, haste my sons! I guard the flying rear.
The hero spoke; the trembling tribes obey,
While deeper glooms obscure the source of day.
Sudden the savage bands collect amain,
Hang on the rear and sweep them o’er the plain;
Their shouts, redoubling with the flying war,
Drown the loud groans and torture all the air.
The hawks of heaven, that o’er the field had stood,
Scared
