Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE DELIVERANCE OF VIENNA, by VINCENZO DA FILICAJA


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE DELIVERANCE OF VIENNA, by                    
First Line: The chords, the sacred chords of gold
Last Line: And close my dazzled eye, and rest my wearied wing.
Alternate Author Name(s): Filicaia, Vincenzo Da
Subject(s): Vienna


THE chords, the sacred chords of gold,
Strike, O Muse, in measure bold;
And frame a sparkling wreath of joyous songs
For that great God to whom revenge belongs.
Who shall resist his might
Who marshals for the fight
Earthquake and thunder, hurricane and flame?
He smote the haughty race
Of unbelieving Thrace,
And turned their rage to fear, their pride to shame.
He looked in wrath from high,
Upon their vast array;
And, in the twinkling of an eye,
Tambour and trump and battle-cry,
And steeds and turbaned infantry,
Passed like a dream away.
Such power defends the mansions of the just:
But, like a city without walls,
The grandeur of the mortal falls
Who glories in his strength and makes not God his trust.

The proud blasphemers thought all earth their own;
They deemed that soon the whirlwind of their ire
Would sweep down tower and palace, dome and spire,
The Christian altars and the Augustan throne.
And soon, they cried, shall Austria bow
To the dust her lofty brow.
The princedoms of Almayne
Shall wear the Phrygian chain;
In humbler waves shall vassal Tiber roll;
And Rome, a slave forlorn,
Her laurelled tresses shorn,
Shall feel our iron in her inmost soul.
Who shall bid the torrent stay?
Who shall bar the lightning's way?
Who arrest the advancing van
Of the fiery Ottoman?

As the curling smoke-wreaths fly
When fresh breezes clear the sky,
Passed away each swelling boast
Of the misbelieving host.
From the Hebrus rolling far
Came the murky cloud of war,
And in shower and tempest dread
Burst on Austria's fenceless head.
But not for vaunt or threat
Didst thou, O Lord, forget
The flock so dearly bought, and loved so well.
Even in the very hour
Of guilty pride and power
Full on the circumcised thy vengeance fell.
Then the fields were heaped with dead,
Then the streams with gore were red,
And every bird of prey, and every beast,
From wood and cavern thronged to thy great feast.

What terror seized the fiends obscene of Nile!
How wildly in his place of doom beneath,
Arabia's lying prophet gnashed his teeth,
And cursed his blighted hopes and wasted guile!
When, at the bidding of thy sovereign might,
Flew on their destined path
Thy messengers of wrath,
Riding on storms and wrapped in deepest night.
The Phthian mountains saw,
And quaked with mystic awe:
The proud Sultana of the Straits bowed down
Her jewelled neck and her embattled crown.
The miscreants, as they raised their eyes
Glaring defiance on thy skies,
Saw adverse winds and clouds display
The terrors of their black array;
Saw each portentous star
Whose fiery aspect turned of yore to flight
The iron chariots of the Canaanite
Gird its bright harness for a deadlier war.

Beneath thy withering look
Their limbs with palsy shook;
Scattered on earth the Crescent banners lay;
Trembled with panic fear
Sabre and targe and spear,
Through the proud armies of the rising day.
Faint was each heart, unnerved each hand;
And, if they strove to charge or stand,
Their efforts were as vain
As his who, scared in feverish sleep
By evil dreams, essays to leap,
Then backward falls again.
With a crash of wild dismay,
Their ten thousand ranks gave way;
Fast they broke, and fast they fled;
Trampled, mangled, dying, dead,
Horse and horseman mingled lay;
Till the mountains of the slain
Raised the valleys to the plain.
Be all the glory to thy name divine!
The swords were ours; the arm, O Lord, was thine.

Therefore to thee, beneath whose footstool wait
The powers which erring man calls Chance and Fate,
To thee who hast laid low
The pride of Europe's foe,
And taught Byzantium's sullen lords to fear,
I pour my spirit out
In a triumphant shout,
And call all ages and all lands to hear.
Thou who evermore endurest,
Loftiest, mightiest, wisest, purest,
Thou, whose will destroys or saves,
Dread of tyrants, hope of slaves,
The wreath of glory is from thee,
And the red sword of victory.
There where exulting Danube's flood
Runs stained with Islam's noblest blood
From that tremendous field,
There where in mosque the tyrants met,
And from the crier's minaret
Unholy summons pealed,
Pure shrines and temples now shall be
Decked for a worship worthy thee.
To thee thy whole creation pays
With mystic sympathy its praise,
The air, the earth, the seas:
The day shines forth with livelier beam;
There is a smile upon the stream,
An anthem on the breeze.
Glory, they cry, to him whose might
Hath turned the barbarous foe to flight,
Whose arm protects with power divine
The city of his favored line.
The caves, the woods, the rocks, repeat the sound;
The everlasting hills roll the long echoes round.

But if thy rescued Church may dare
Still to besiege thy throne with prayer,
Sheathe not, we implore thee, Lord,
Sheathe not thy victorious sword.
Still Pannonia pines away,
Vassal of a double sway;
Still thy servants groan in chains,
Still the race which hates thee reigns.
Part the living from the dead;
Join the members to the head:
Snatch thine own sheep from yon fell monster's hold;
Let one kind shepherd rule one undivided fold.

He is the victor, only he
Who reaps the fruits of victory.
We conquered once in vain
When foamed the Ionian waves with gore,
And heaped Lepanto's stormy shore
With wrecks and Moslem slain.
Yet wretched Cyprus never broke
The Syrian tyrant's iron yoke.
Shall the twice-vanquished foe
Again repeat his blow?
Shall Europe's sword be hung to rust in peace?
No! let the red-cross ranks
Of the triumphant Franks
Bear swift deliverance to the shrines of Greece,
And in her inmost heart let Asia feel
The avenging plagues of Western fire and steel.

O God! for one short moment raise
The veil which hides those glorious days.
The flying foes I see thee urge
Even to the river's headlong verge.
Close on their rear the loud uproar
Of fierce pursuit from Ister's shore
Comes pealing on the wind;
The Raab's wild waters are before,
The Christian sword behind.
Sons of perdition, speed your flight.
No earthly spear is in the rest;
No earthly champion leads to fight
The warriors of the West.
The Lord of Hosts assets his old renown,
Scatters, and smites, and slays, and tramples down.
Fast, fast, beyond what mortal tongue can say,
Or mortal fancy dream,
He rushes on his prey;
Till, with the terrors of the wondrous theme
Bewildered and appalled, I cease to sing,
And close my dazzled eye, and rest my wearied wing.





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