And on their track in silence follows;
A fuller air swims everywhere,
A freer murmur shakes the bough,
A thousand fires surprise the spires,
And all the city wakes below.

What morn shall rise, what cursed morn,
To find this bright pomp all surrendered,
These palaces an empty shell,
This vigor listless ruin rendered,--
While every sprite of its delight
Mocks fickle echoes through the court,
And in our place a sculptured trace
Saddens some stranger's careless sport?

Oh, gay with all the stately stir,
And bending to your silken flowing,
One day, my banner-poles, ye creak
Naked beneath the high winds blowing!
One day ye fall across the wall
And moulder in the moat's green bosom,
While in the cleft the wild tree left
Bursts into spikes of cruel blossom!

Ah, never dawn that day for me!
O Fate, its fierce foreboding banish!
When all our hosts, like pallid ghosts
Blown on by morning, melt and vanish!
Oh, in the fires of their desires
Consume the toil of those invaders!