Swims faintly throbbing, and my shadow hides Skulking beneath me from the brassy sky. And when night comes to soothe with breath of balm And pomp of stars the worn and weary world, Her eyes rise in my soul and make its day. And even into the battle comes my love, Snatching the duty that I offer Heaven. At closing of El-Majed's awful day, When the last quivering sunbeams, choked with dust And fume of blood, failed on the level plain, In the last charge, when gathered all our knights The precious handful who from morn had stemmed The fury of the multitudinous hosts Of Islam, where in youth's hot fire and pride Ramped the young lion-whelp, Ben-Saladin; As down the slope we rode at eventide, The dying sunlight faintly smiled to greet Our tattered guidons and our dinted helms And lance-heads blooming with the battle's rose. Into the vale, dusk with the shadow of death, With silent lips and ringing mail we rode. And something in the spirit of the hour, Or fate, or memory, or sorrow, or sin, Or love, which unto me is all of these, Possessed and bound me; for when dashed our troop In stormy clangor on the Paynim lines The soul of my dead youth came into me; Faded away my oath; the woes of Zion, God was forgot; blazed in my leaping heart, With instant flash, life's inextinguished fires; Plunging along each tense limb poured the blood Hot with its years of sleeping-smothered flame. And in a dream I charged, and in a dream I smote resistless; foemen in my path Fell unregarded, like the wayside flowers Clipped by the truant's staff in daisied lanes. For over me burned lustrous the dear eyes Of my beloved; I strove as at a joust To gain at end the guerdon of her smile. And ever, as in the dense melee I dashed, Her name burst from my lips, as lightning breaks Out of the plunging wrack of summer storms.