Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE BRIGAND LEADER AND HIS WIFE; SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE OF EASTLAKE'S, by FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE BRIGAND LEADER AND HIS WIFE; SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE OF EASTLAKE'S, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Dark chieftain of the heath and height!
Last Line: Its prayer for thee be poured and heard!
Alternate Author Name(s): Browne, Felicia Dorothea
Subject(s): Eastlake, Sir Charles (1793-1865)


DARK chieftain of the heath and height!
Wild feaster on the hills by night!
See'st thou the stormy sunset's glow
Flung back by glancing spears below?
Now for one strife of stern despair!
The foe hath tracked thee to thy lair.

Thou, against whom the voice of blood
Hath risen from rock and lonely wood;
And in whose dreams a moan should be
Not of the water, nor the tree;
Haply thine own last hour is nigh, --
Yet shalt thou not forsaken die.

There's one that pale beside thee stands,
More true than all thy mountain bands!
She will not shrink in doubt and dread
When the balls whistle round thy head:
Nor leave thee, though thy closing eye
No longer may to hers reply.

Oh! many a soft and quiet grace
Hath faded from her form and face;
And many a thought, the fitting guest
Of woman's meek, religious breast,
Hath perished in her wanderings wide,
Through the deep forests, by thy side.

Yet, mournfully surviving all,
A flower upon a ruin's wall --
A friendless thing, whose lot is cast
Of lovely ones to be the last --
Sad, but unchanged through good and ill.
Thine is her lone devotion still.

And oh! not wholly lost the heart
Where that undying love hath part;
Not worthless all, though far and long
From home estranged, and guided wrong;
Yet may its depths by heaven be stirred,
Its prayer for thee be poured and heard!





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