The 

 Human 

 Harvest 



What profit that our galleys ride, 

 Pine-forest-like, on every main? 



Ruin and wreck are at our side^ 



Grim warders of the House of Pain. 



Where are the brave ^ the strongs the fleet? 



Where is our English chivalry? 

 Wild grasses are their burial-sheet. 



And sobbing waves their threnody. 



O loved ones lying far away, 



What word of love can dead lips send! 

 O wasted dust! O senseless clay! 



Is this the end! is this the end! 



[98] 



Peace, peace! we wrong the noble dead 

 To vex their solemn slumber so: 



Though childless^ and with thorn-crowned head^ 

 Up the steep road must England go. 



Yet when this fiery web is spun. 

 Her watchmen shall decry from far 



The young Republic like a sun 



Rise from these crimson seas of war. 



We have here the same motive, the same 

 lesson, which Byron applies to Rome : — 



The Niobe of Nations — there she stands, 

 Crownless and childless in her voiceless woe, 



