Commanding, aiding, animating all,

Where foe appeared to press, or friend to fall,

Cheers Lara's voice, and waves or strikes his steel,
Inspiring hope himself had ceased to feel.

None fled, for well they knew that flight were vain;
But those that waver turn to smite again,
While yet they find the firmest of the foe
Recoil before their leader's look and blow:
Now girt with numbers, now almost alone,
He foils their ranks, or reunites his own;
Himself he spared not-once they seemed to fly-
Now was the time, he waved his hand on high,
And shook-why sudden droops that plumed crest?
The shaft is sped—the arrow's in his breast!
That fatal gesture left the unguarded side,
And Death hath stricken down yon arm of pride.
The word of triumph fainted from his tongue;
That hand, so raised, how droopingly it hung!
But yet the sword instinctively retains,
Though from its fellow shrink the falling reins;
These Kaled snatches: dizzy with the blow,
And senseless bending o'er his saddle-bow,
Perceives not Lara that his anxious page
Beguiles his charger from the combat's rage:
Meantime his followers charge, and charge again;

Too mixed the slayers now to heed the slain !

Kaled leads his lord from the strife to a retired spot, where he may die :

Beneath a lime, remoter from the scene,

Where but for him that strife had never been,
A breathing, but devoted, warrior lay:
'Twas Lara bleeding fast from life away.
His follower once, and now his only guide,
Kneels Kaled watchful o'er his welling side,
And with his scarf would stanch the tides that rush,

With each convulsiou, in a blacker gush;

And then, as his faint breathing waxes low,

In feebler, not less fatal, tricklings flow:

He scarce can speak, but motions him 'tis vain

And merely adds another throb to pain.

He clasps the hand that pang which would assuage,
And sadly smiles his thanks to that dark page
Who nothing fears, nor feels, nor heeds, nor sees,
Save that damp brow which rests upon his knees;
Save that pale aspect, where the eye, though dim,

Held all the light that shone on earth for him.

A party of the enemy, with Otho at their head, find the dying Lara at this spot. He is conversing with Kaled in that unknown tongue which serves for all their confidential communications.

Their words, though faint, were many—from the tone
Their import those who heard could judge alone;
From this, you might have deemed young Kaled's death
More near than Lara's by his voice and breath,

So sad, so deep, and hesitating, broke

The accents his scarce-moving pale lips spoke;
But Lara's voice, though low, at first was clear

And calm, till murmuring death gasped hoarsely near:
But from his visage little could we guess,
So unrepentant, dark, and passionless,
Save that, when struggling nearer to his last,
Upon that page his eye was kindly cast;
And once, as Kaled's answering accents ceast,
Rose Lara's hand, and pointed to the cast:
Whether (as then the breaking sun from high
Rolled back the clouds) the morrow caught his eye,
Or that 'twas chance, or some remembered scene,
That raised his arm to point where such had been,
Scarce Kaled seemed to know, but turned away,
As if his heart abhorred that coming day.
And shrunk his glance before that morning light,
To look on Lara's brow-where all grew night.
Yet sense seemed left, though better were its loss;
For when one near displayed the absolving cross,
And proffered to his touch the holy bead,
Of which his parting soul might own the need,
He looked upon it with an eye profaae,

And smiled-Heaven pardon! if 'twere with disdain :
And Kaled, though he spoke not, nor withdrew
From Lara's face his fixed despairing view,

With brow repulsive, and with gesture swift,
Flung back the hand which held the sacred gift,
As if such but disturbed the expiring man,
Nor seemed to know his life but then began—
That life of immortality, secure

To none, save them whose faith in Christ is sure.

But gasping heaved the breath that Lara drew,
And dull the film along his dim eye grew;

His limbs stretched fluttering, and his head drooped o'er
The weak, yet still untiring, knee that bore;
He pressed the hand he held upon his heart-
It beats no more, but Kaled will not part
With the cold grasp; but feels, and feels in vain,
For that faint throb which answers not again.
'It beats!'-Away, thou dreamer! he is gone-
It once was Lara which thou look'st upon.

The death of Lara discovers the sex of Kaled:

He gazed, as if not yet had passed away
The haughty spirit of that humble clay;
And those around have roused him from his trance,
But cannot tear from thence his fixed glance;
And when, in raising him from where he bore
Within his arms the form that felt no more,
He saw the head his breast would still sustain

Roll down like earth to earth upon the plain;
He did not dash himself thereby, nor tear
The glossy tendrils of his raven hair,

But strove to stand and gaze, but reeled and fell,
Scarce breathing more than that he loved so well,
Than that he loved! Oh! never yet beneath
The breast of man such trusty love may breathe!
That trying moment hath at once revealed
The secret long and yet but half, concealed;
In baring to revive that lifeless breast,
Its grief seemed ended, but the sex confest;
And life returned, and Kaled felt no shame—
What now to her was womanhood or fame ?

They laid him in the earth, and on his breast
Besides the wound that sent his soul to rest,
They found the scattered dints of many a scar,
Which were not planted there in recent war:
Where'er had passed his summer years of life,
It seems they vanished in a land of strife;
But all unknown his glory or his guilt,
These only told that somewhere blood was spilt;
And Ezzelin, who might have spoke the past,
Returned no more-that night appeared his last.

The dark manner of Ezzelin's disappearance is not satisfactorily explained, but the reader is left to gather it from this recital: Upon that night (a peasant's is the tale)

A serf that crossed the intervening vale,
When Cynthia's light almost gave way to morn,
And nearly veiled in mist her waning horn;

A serf, that rose betimes to tread the wood,
And hew the bough that bought his children's food,
Passed by the river that divides the plain
Of Otho's lands and Lara's broad domain:
He heard a tramp-a horse and horseman broke
From out the wood-before him was a cloak
Wrapt round some burden at his saddle-bow,
Bent was his head, and hidden was his brow.
Roused by the sudden sight at such a time,
And some foreboding that it might be crime,
Himself unheeded watched the stranger's course,
Who reached the river, bounded from his horse,
And, lifting thence the burden which he bore,
Heaved up the bank, and dashed it from the shore ;

Then paused, and looked, and turned, and seemed to watch

And still another hurried glance would snatch,
And follow with his step the stream that flowed,
As if e'en yet too much its surface showed:
At once he started, stooped, around him strown
The winter floods had scattered heaps of stone;
Of these the heaviest thence he gathered there,
And slung them with a more than common care.
Meantime the serf had crept to where unseen
Himself might safely mark what this might mean;

He caught a glimpse as of a floating breast,
And something glittered starlike on the vest;
But, ere he well could mark the buoyant trunk,
A massy fragment smote it, and it sunk :
It rose again, but indistinct to view,
And left the waters of a purple hue,
Then deeply disappeared: the horseman gazed
Till ebbed the latest eddy it had raised;
Then, turning, vaulted on his pawing steed,
And instant spurred him into panting speed.
His face was masked-the features of the dead,
If dead it were, escaped the observer's dread;
But, if in sooth a star his bosom bore,
Such is the badge that knighthood ever wore,
And such 'tis known Sir Ezzelin had worn
Upon the night that led to such a morn.
If thus he perished, Heaven receive his soul!
His undiscoverd limbs to ocean roll;
And charity upon the hope would dwell
It was not Lara's hand by which he fell.

The sorrowing Kaled dies distracted and broken-hearted:
And Kaled-Lara-Ezzelin-are gone,

Alike without their monumental stone!
The first all efforts vainly strove to wean
From lingering where her chieftain's blood had been ;,
Grief had so tamed a spirit once too proud,
Her tears were few, her wailing never loud;
But furious, would you tear her from the spot
Where yet she scarce believed that he was not,
Her eye shot forth with all the living fire
That haunts the tigress in her whelpless ire;
But, left to waste her weary moments there,
She talked all idly unto shapes of air,
Such as the busy brain of Sorrow paints,
And woos to listen to her fond complaints:
And she would sit beneath the very tree
Where lay his drooping head upon her knee
And, in that posture where she saw him fall,
His words, his looks, his dying grasp, recall;