There is a brook, that from its source High in the rocky hill, Pours o’er the plain its limpid course, To pay to Teio’s monarch force Its tributary rill; Which, in the peaceful summer-tide, The swarthy shepherd sits beside, And loitering, as it rolls along In cadence pours his rustic song-- Carol of love or pious chaunt, Or tale of knight and giant gaunt, And lady captive held; Or strains, not fabled, of the war, Where the great champion of Bivar The Moorish pagan quell’d. But now, no shepherd loiters there-- He flies, with all his fleecy care, To mountains high and far, And starts, and breathless stops to hear Borne on the breeze, and to his fear Seeming, at every gust, more near, The distant roar of war. XXIV. But on the streamlet’s margin green Other than shepherd forms are seen; And sounds, unlike the rustic song, The troubled current rolls along; When, of the cooling wave to taste, From either host the warriors haste With busy tread and hum: You would have thought that streamlet bound Were listed field or sacred ground Where battle might not come. So late in adverse contest tried, So deep in recent carnage dyed, To mutual honour they confide Their mutual fates; nor shrink To throw the cap and helm aside, As, mingled o’er the narrow tide, They bend their heads to drink; Or, nature’s feverish wants supplied, Unarm’d, unguarded, side by side, Safe in a soldier’s faith and pride They rest them on the brink. They speak not--in each others phrase Unskill’d--but yet the thoughts of praise, And honour to unfold, The heart has utterance of its own; And ere the signal trump was blown, And ere the drum had roll’d, The honest grasp of manly hands, That common link of distant lands, That sign which nature understands, The generous feeling told: The high and sacred pledge it gave, That both were true, and both were brave, And something added of regret, At parting when so lately met, And (not developed quite) Some dubious hopes of meeting yet As heaven their devious paths might set, In friendship or in fight. XXV.