Bigotry's Victim

10Yet the fowl of the desert, when danger encroaches,

11Dares fearless to perish defending her brood,

12Though the fiercest of cloud-piercing tyrants approaches

13Thirsting — ay, thirsting for blood;

14And demands, like mankind, his brother for food;

15Yet more lenient, more gentle than they;

16For hunger, not glory, the prey

17Must perish. Revenge does not howl in the dead.

18Nor ambition with fame crown the murderer's head.

19Though weak as the lama that bounds on the mountains,

20And endued not with fast-fleeting footsteps of air,

21Yet, yet will I draw from the purest of fountains,

22Though a fiercer than tiger is there.

23Though, more dreadful than death, it scatters despair,

24Though its shadow eclipses the day,

25And the darkness of deepest dismay

26Spreads the influence of soul-chilling terror around,

27And lowers on the corpses, that rot on the ground.

28They came to the fountain to draw from its stream

29Waves too pure, too celestial, for mortals to see;

30They bathed for awhile in its silvery beam,

31Then perished, and perished like me.

32For in vain from the grasp of the Bigot I flee;

33The most tenderly loved of my soul

34Are slaves to his hated control.

35He pursues me, he blasts me! 'Tis in vain that I fly:

36What remains, but to curse him, — to curse him and die?