Those dimpled cheeks, those temples violet-tinged, Those lips of nectar and those eyes of heaven! Charoba, though indeed she never drank The liquid pearl, or twined the nodding crown, Or when she wanted cool and calm repose Dreamed of the crawling asp and grated tomb, Was wretched up to royalty: the jibe Struck her, most piercing where love pierced before, From those whose freedom centres in their tongue, Handmaidens, pages, courtiers, priests, buffoons. Congratulations here, there prophecies, Here children, not repining at neglect While tumult sweeps them ample room for play, Everywhere questions answered ere begun, Everywhere crowds, for everywhere alarm. Thus winter gone, nor spring (though near) arrived, Urged slanting onward by the bickering breeze That issues from beneath Aurora’s car, Shudder the sombrous waves; at every beam More vivid, more by every breath impelled, Higher and higher up the fretted rocks Their turbulent refulgence they display. Madness, which like the spiral element The more it seizes on the fiercer burns, Hurried them blindly forward, and involved In flame the senses and in gloom the soul. Determined to protect the country’s gods And asking their protection, they adjure Each other to stand forward, and insist With zeal, and trample under foot the slow; And disregardful of the Sympathies Divine, those Sympathies whose delicate hand Touching the very eyeball of the heart, Awakens it, not wounds it nor inflames, Blind wretches! they with desperate embrace Hang on the pillar till the temple fall. Oft the grave judge alarms religious wealth And rouses anger under gentle words. Woe to the wiser few who dare to cry “People! these men are not your enemies, Inquire their errand, and resist when wronged.” Together childhood, priesthood, womanhood, The scribes and elders of the land, exclaim, “Seek they not hidden treasure in the tombs? Raising the ruins, levelling the dust, Who can declare whose ashes they disturb! Build they not fairer cities than our own, Extravagant enormous apertures For light, and portals larger, open courts Where all ascending all are unconfined, And wider streets in purer air than ours? Temples quite plain with equal architraves They build, nor bearing gods like ours embossed. Oh, profanation! Oh, our ancestors!” Though all the vulgar hate a foreign face, It more offends weak eyes and homely age, Dalica most, who thus her aim pursued. “My promise, O Charoba, I perform. Proclaim to gods and men a festival Throughout the land, and bid the strangers eat; Their anger thus we haply may disarm.” “O Dalica,” the grateful queen replied, “Nurse of my childhood, soother of my cares, Preventer of my wishes, of my thoughts, Oh, pardon youth, oh, pardon royalty! If hastily to Dalica I sued,