Before that Leader strode a shadowy Form; Her limbs like mist, her torch like meteor showed, With which she beckoned him through fight and storm, And all he crushed that crossed his desperate road, Nor thought, nor feared, nor looked on what he trode. Realms could not glut his pride, blood could not slake, So oft as e’er she shook her torch abroad— It was AMBITION bade her terrors wake, Nor deigned she, as of yore, a milder form to take. XLI. No longer now she spurned at mean revenge, Or stayed her hand for conquered foeman’s moan; As when, the fates of aged Rome to change, By Cæsar’s side she crossed the Rubicon. Nor joyed she to bestow the spoils she won, As when the banded powers of Greece were tasked To war beneath the Youth of Macedon: No seemly veil her modern minion asked, He saw her hideous face, and loved the fiend unmasked. XLII. That Prelate marked his march—On banners blazed With battles won in many a distant land, On eagle-standards and on arms he gazed; “And hopest thou, then,” he said, “thy power shall stand? Oh! thou hast builded on the shifting sand, And thou hast tempered it with slaughter’s flood; And know, fell scourge in the Almighty’s hand, Gore-moistened trees shall perish in the bud, And by a bloody death shall die the Man of Blood!” XLIII. The ruthless Leader beckoned from his train A wan fraternal Shade, and bade him kneel, And paled his temples with the crown of Spain, While trumpets rang, and heralds cried “Castile!” Not that he loved him—No!—In no man’s weal, Scarce in his own, e’er joyed that sullen heart; Yet round that throne he bade his warriors wheel, That the poor puppet might perform his part, And be a sceptred slave, at his stern beck to start. XLIV. But on the Natives of that Land misused, Not long the silence of amazement hung, Nor brooked they long their friendly faith abused; For, with a common shriek, the general tongue Exclaimed, “To arms!”—and fast to arms they sprung. And VALOUR woke, that Genius of the Land! Pleasure, and ease, and sloth aside he flung, As burst the awakening Nazarite his band, When ’gainst his treacherous foes he clenched his dreadful hand. XLV.