stifled plea,--
Who saves me from this injury?

Where bides each valorous adorer?
The zeal of Christendom has gone!
Where is the ancient Faith's restorer?
Who lifts the cross and beckons on?
Who'll free the grave and rend in twain
The haughty foe's insulting chain?

A holy storm o'er earth and billow
Is rushing through the midnight hour;
To stir the sleeper from his pillow,
It roars round city, camp, and tower,
In wailful cry from battlements,--
Up, tardy Christian, get thee hence.

Lo, angels everywhere commanding
With solemn faces, voicelessly,--
And pilgrims at the gates are standing
With tearful cheeks, appealingly!
They sadly mourn, those holy men,
The fierceness of the Saracen.

There breaks a red and sullen morrow
O'er Christendom's extended field;
The grief, that springs from love and sorrow,
In every bosom is revealed;
The hearth is left in sudden zeal,
And each one grasps the cross and steel.

The armed bands are chafing madly,
To rescue the Redeemer's grave;
Toward the sea they hasten gladly,
The holy ground to reach and save.
And children too obey the spell,
The consecrated mass to swell.

High waves the cross, its triumph flinging
On scarred hosts that rally there,
And Heaven, wide its portal swinging,
Is all revealed in upper air;
For Christ each warrior burns to pour
His blood upon the sacred shore.

To battle, Christians! God's own legion
Attends you to the promised land,
Nor long before the Paynim region
Will smoke beneath His terror-hand.
We soon shall drench in joyous mood
The sacred grave with heathen blood.

The Holy Virgin hovers, lying
On angel wings, above the plain.
Where all, by hostile weapon dying,
Upon her bosom wake again.
She bends with cheeks serenely bright
Amid the thunder of the fight.

Then over to the holy places!
That stifled plea is never dumb!
By prayer and conquest blot the traces,
That mark the guilt of Christendom!
If first the Savior's grave we gain,
No longer lasts the heathen reign.

Henry's whole soul was in commotion. The tomb rose before him like a
youthful form, pale and stately, upon a massive stone in the midst of a
savage multitude, cruelly maltreated, and gazing with sad countenance
upon a cross, which shone in the background with vivid outlines, and
multiplied itself in