His throbbing veins the curdled blood
Struggled to gain its equable flood.
His scattered senses he recalls—
Alas! that inward gaze appals!
Though bright above the stars may shine,
Dark still is all his breast within:
He woke to find the phantom of his brain
Too true an emblem of his real pain.
XVI.
While yet the day's reviving light
Contended with the shades of night,
Winding its radiance with the twilight grey,
The friends resumed their tedious way;
With patient gaze from print to print
Following the foeman as he went.
Where, soft, the earth's retentive breast
Preserved the footfall as impressed,
Elate with hope, they bounded on:
Mid rocks, with scanty moss o'ergrown,
Erewhile they journeyed, and they cursed
The soil whose barren bosom nursed
No fragile herb whose wounded stem11
