With him, aiding heart and hand,
The remnant of his gallant band.
Still the church is tenable,

Whence issued late the fated ball

That half avenged the city's fall,
When Alp, her fierce assailant, fell:
Thither bending sternly back,
They leave before a bloody track;
And, with their faces to the foe,
Dealing wounds with every blow,

865

870

For narrow the way that led to the spot
Where still the Christians yielded not;

880

And the foremost, if fearful, may vainly try
Through the massy column to turn and fly;
They perforce must do or die.

885

They die; but ere their eyes could close

Avengers o'er their bodies rose;

Fresh and furious, fast they fill

The ranks unthinned, though slaughtered still;

And faint the weary Christians wax

890

Before the still renewed attacks:

And now the Othmans gain the gate;

Still resists its iron weight,

And still, all deadly aimed and hot,

From every crevice comes the shot;

895

From every shattered window

pour

The volleys of the sulphurous shower:

But the portal wavering grows and weak

And placed upon that holy shrine

To fix our thoughts on things divine,
When pictured there, we kneeling see
Her, and the boy-God on her knee,
Smiling sweetly on each prayer

To heaven, as if to waft it there.

Still she smiled; even now she smiles,
Though slaughter streams along her aisles:
Minotti lifted his aged eye,

And made the sign of a cross with a sigh,

Then seized a torch which blazed thereby;
And still he stood, while, with steel and flame,
Inward and onward the Mussulman came.

XXXI.

910

915

Were smeared, and slippery-stained, and strown

With broken swords, and helms o'erthrown:

E

There were dead above, and the dead below
Lay cold in many a coffined row;

You might see them piled in sable state,
By a pale light through a gloomy grate;
But War had entered their dark caves,
And stored along the vaulted graves

930

In masses by the fleshless dead:

Her sulphurous treasures, thickly spread

Here, throughout the siege, had been
The Christians' chiefest magazine;

To these a late formed train now led,
Minotti's last and stern resource

935

Against the foe's o'erwhelming force.

940

XXXII.

The foe came on, and few remain

To strive, and those must strive in vain :

For lack of further lives, to slake

The thirst of vengeance now awake,

With barbarous blows they gash the dead,

945

And lop the already lifeless head,

And fell the statues from their niche,
And spoil the shrines of offerings rich,

Converted by Christ to his blood so divine,

Which his worshippers drank at the break of day, To shrive their souls ere they joined in the fray. 960 Still a few drops within it lay;

And round the sacred table glow

Twelve lofty lamps, in splendid row,

From the purest metal cast;

A spoil-the richest, and the last:

965

XXXIII.

So near they came, the nearest stretched

Το

grasp the spoil he almost reached,

When old Minotti's hand

Touched with the torch the train

"Tis fired!

970