  (A Ballad of Armenia.) They had fought, they had failed, those women and now, in a wild-eyed throng, They fled from the red destroyer, and they cried: “O Lord, how long?— How long, O Lord, till the ending of the ghastly sounds and sights, Till the dripping days be finished, and the thrice red-running nights,— Till the last cold corpse falls, severed from the last Armenian head, Till the last maid be dishonoured, and the last hot tear be shed?” They had fled from the red destroyer, but he hastens around their track, Till the fate they had flown is before them, and they turn in their pathway back. But, Northward and Southward and Eastward and Westward, and round and round, Come the gleam of the steely lightning, and the wild, soul-harrowing sound, Go down in the surge of slaughter and the wreck of the great Opprest. And now they are huddled together, as the death-cries rise and swell, Where the rock runs up to Heaven, and the gulf goes down to Hell,— On the edge of a beetling hillock; when, lo! from the ’wildered crowd, On a peak of the rock steps Schakhe, and calls to her sisters, loud:— “O sisters in nameless sorrow, baptised in a life of tears; Before you two paths lie open: behind you a thousand years Fade far in the dusky distance, one long, broad stream of blood, That flows by the wreck and ruin of sword and fire and flood! Before you two paths lie open: one leads where dangers lurk, And the pain and the dumb dishonour from the merciless hand of the Turk. Choose ye! Will ye thread that pathway, prove false to the men ye love; Prove false to the children ye bore them; prove false to the God above? Will ye sell yourselves to the spoilers of father and mother and child, Who butchered and then, like devils, at their cries for mercy smiled? Do ye think of the thousands rotting, flung down in a ghastly heap Unblessed; whose dust commingles in their last unhallowed sleep? Do ye think of the blood, the sorrow, the wild, sky-rending cries, As the scarce-born babe was mangled to feast their fiendish eyes? Do you think of the brute defilement when, full in the flare of day, Ye were robbed of your dear-prized honour, and made the Moslem’s prey? Will ye choose that path, O sisters? ’Tis a path ye have often trod; Or throw yourselves on the mercy of the great, all-powerful God? What though He is veiled in silence, and behind our clouds grown dim; If He come not down to help us, then we will go to Him. See! there is the other pathway, down, down to the home of Night. Jump! long ere the body be broken, the soul will have taken flight. He will give His charge to His angels: in their hands they will bear thee up, As ye tread the Saviour’s pathway, and drink the Saviour’s cup. There,—lean on my breast, sweet infant, and good-bye to Earth and woe. Now, sisters, the way lies open: I am weary and long to go!” They had fought: they had failed; and they followed brave Schakhe, a martyr throng;— And soft o’er the corpse-strewn valley the winds sigh: “Lord, how long?” |
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