oves to shed;
Perchance a sigh of holy pity gives
To the sad bosom, where its image lives.
Oh nature! sure thy sympathetic ties 145
Shall o'er the ruins of the grave arise;
Undying spring from the relentless tomb,
And shed, in scenes of love, a lasting bloom.
Not long Iberia's sullied trophies wave,
Her guilty warriors press th' untimely grave; 150
For av'rice, rising from the caves of earth,
Wakes all her savage spirit into birth;
Bids proud Almagro feel her baleful flame,
And Cusco's treasures from Pizarro claim:
Pizarro holds the rich alluring prize, 155
With firmer grasp, the fires of discord rise.
Now fierce in hostile rage, each warlike train
Purple with issuing gore Peruvia's plain;
There, breathing hate, and vengeful death they flood,
And bath'd their impious bands in kindred blood; 160
While pensive on each hill, whose lofty brow
O'erhung with sable woods the vale below;
Peruvia's hapless tribes in scatter'd throngs,
Beheld the fiends of strife avenge their wrongs.
Now conquest, bending on her crimson wings, 165
Her sanguine laurel to Pizarro brings;
While bound, and trembling in her iron chain,
Almagro swells the victor's captive train.
In vain his pleading voice, his suppliant eye,
Conjure his conqu'ror, by the holy tie 170
That seal'd their mutual league with sacred force,
When first to climes unknown they bent their course;
When danger's rising horrors lowr'd afar,
The storms of ocean, and the toils of war,
The sad remains of wasted life to spare, 175
The shrivell'd bosom, and the silver'd hair:--
But vainly from his lips these accents part,
Nor move Pizarro's cold, relentless heart,
That never trembled to the suff'rer's sigh,
Or view'd the suff'rer's tear with melting eye. 180
Almagro dies--the victor's savage pride
To his pale corse funereal rites denied,
Chill'd by the heavy dews of night it lay,
And wither'd in the sultry beam of day,
Till Indian bosoms, touch'd with gen'rous woe, 185
In the pale form forgot the tyrant foe;
The last sad duties to his ashes paid,
And sooth'd with pity's tear the hov'ring shade.
With unrelenting hate the conqu'ror views
Almagro's band, and vengeance still pursues; 190
Condemns the victims of his power to stray