At closing of El-Majed's awful day,
When the last quivering sunbeams, choked with dust
And fume of blood, failed on the level plain,
In the last charge, when gathered all our knights
The precious handful who from morn had stemmed
The fury of the multitudinous hosts
Of Islam, where in youth's hot fire and pride
Ramped the young lion-whelp, Ben-Saladin;
As down the slope we rode at eventide,
The dying sunlight faintly smiled to greet
Our tattered guidons and our dinted helms
And lance-heads blooming with the battle's rose.
Into the vale, dusk with the shadow of death,
With silent lips and ringing mail we rode.
And something in the spirit of the hour,
Or fate, or memory, or sorrow, or sin,
Or love, which unto me is all of these,
Possessed and bound me; for when dashed our troop
In stormy clangour on the Paynim lines
The soul of my dead youth came into me;
Faded away my oath; the woes of Zion,
God was forgot; blazed in my leaping heart,
With instant flash, life's inextinguished fires;
Plunging along each tense limb poured the blood
Hot with its years of sleeping-smothered flame.
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