Le meurtre aux mille bras comme un géant se lève; Les palais embrasés se changent en tombeaux; Pères, femmes, époux, tout tombe sous le glaive; Autour de la cité s'appellent les corbeaux. Les mères ont frémi! les vierges palpitantes, O calife! ont pleuré leurs jeunes ans flétris; Et les coursiers fougueux ont traîné hors des tentes Leurs corps vivans, de coups et de baisers meurtris! Les tout petits enfans, écrasés sous les dalles, Ont vécu: de leur sang le fer s'abreuve encor...-- Ton peuple baise, ô Roi, la poudre des sandales Qu'à ton pied glorieux attache un cercle d'or!" This is the first chord which Hugo strikes in these poems; it rings sharp and shrill; but the poem is not quite good, because it is not quite true. It was not thus the slave spoke; we are sensible of the poet's own indignation in the narrative. The next poems, "Les têtes du Sérail," "Enthousiasme," and "Navarin," bear additional evidence to the modern Greek influence to which we originally owe _Les Orientales_. But then the poet makes a great artistic advance; he transports himself to the standpoint of the Turks, writes himself into their frame of mind. "La douleur du Pacha" is the first, half-ironic attempt. Dervishes and bombardiers, odalisques and slaves, one after the other, each from his or her own point of view, try to imagine what can be the reason of the Pacha's sitting musing in his tent with his eyes full of tears. But none of the reasons that occur to them is the true one. It is not that his favourite concubine has been unfaithful, nor yet that there has been a head too few in the fellah's sack. No, he is grieving over the death of his favourite Nubian tiger. But this is still only an attempt. The poet has not yet entirely got rid of himself, got outside of himself; we are conscious of him in one weak spot, which disturbs and dissolves the mental picture. But now comes the "Marche turque," and we are in the East. Though the refrain of this masterly poem is a very barbarous one, its general tone is not savage; it is serious, full of a piety which is not the less heartfelt, and of ideas of honour which are not the less sincere because they are different from ours: "Ma dague d'un sang noir à mon côté ruisselle, Et ma hache est pendue à l'arçon de ma selle. J'aime le vrai soldat, effroi de Bélial; Son turban évasé rend son front plus sévère; Il baise avec respect la barbe de son père, Il voue à son vieux sabre un amour filial, Et porte un doliman percé dans les mêlées De plus de coups que n'a de taches étoilées La peau du tigre impérial. Ma dague d'un sang noir à mon côté ruisselle, Et ma hache est pendue à l'arçon de ma selle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .