Aztec Rage by Gary Jennings

Author:Gary Jennings
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2003-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

LORD BYRON’S ODE TO THE MAID OF ZARAGOZA

LORD BYRON WAS in Spain during part of the Spanish war against the French. After he heard the story of how María Agustine had saved the city by leading an impromptu attack after she found her lover dead, he wrote of María, “the Maid of Zaragoza,” in his autobiographical poem, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage:

Ye who shall marvel when you hear her tale,

Oh! had you known her in her softer hour,

Mark’d her black eye that mocks her coal-black veil,

Hear her light, lively tones in Lady’s bower,

Seen her long locks that foil the painter’s power,

Her fairy form, with more than female grace,

Scarce would you deem that Zaragoza’s tower

Beheld her smile in Danger’s Gorgon face,

Thin the closed ranks, and lead in Glory’s fearful chase.

Her lover sinks—she sheds no ill-timed tear;

Her chief is slain—she fills his fatal post;

Her fellows flee—she checks their base career;

The foe retires—she heads the sallying host:

Who can appease like her a lover’s ghost?

Who can avenge so well a leader’s fall?

What maid retrieve when man’s flush’d hope is lost?

Who hang so fiercely on the flying Gaul,

Foil’d by a woman’s hand, before a batter’d wall?

Yet are Spain’s maids no race of Amazons,

But form’d for all the witching arts of love . . .

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