The Last Dream of Attila

From the wild Carpathian passes the wind of the dusk blew down,
And the woven leaves of the oak trees, that seemed as a crimson crown
For the crestward sweep of the mountains, were tangled and tossed and swirled
Till they burned like a second sunset o'er the breadth of the brooding world.

And the wind of the dusk made murmur round the palace doors of the king,
All else held the seal of silence as tense as a muted string,
For the monarch was sunk in slumber, and woe to the reckless one
Who roused from his visions of conquest grim Attila the Hun!

Then a voice cried out from a chamber where the air hung heavy with musk,
Then a voice cried out through the stillness above the wind of the dusk,
"Bring wine! bring wine!" and a beaker was brimmed with the juice of the sun,
And borne by the maid Ildico to Attila the Hun.

She was his latest handmaid, supple, and fair of face
As the bloom of the oleander seen in the vales of Thrace;
She was his latest handmaid, and past the cedarn doors,
Bolted with bronze, and over heaped rugs upon earthen floors,
With the tread of the fawn of the forest, she bore the beaker in
To the scourge of God's trembling nations sprawled on a leopard skin.

Brow that bulked like a bastion above rolling eyes half bleared;
Sinewy hands and hairy that clutched at a scrawny beard;
Lips that were gross and flaccid, murmuring, muttering;
Body of brawn relaxèd, such was this brute of a king!
And he raised the swimming chalice, and he drained it to the lees,
While the light of mirth and malice faded by slow degrees
From his turbulent, tawny features as fades day's dying gleam,
And he spake to the maid Ildico out of his drunken dream.
"I was the one appointed to sear with sanguine scars;
I was the one anointed, and girt with the sword of Mars.
I ranged, with my gory vanguards, from the Volga to the Rhine,
And the rumor of my ravage shook the wall of Constantine.
I was a tide of terror from the Black to the Baltic Sea,
And the tramp of my hosts of triumph rocked the plains of Lombardy.
Aquileia and Concordia I ground into ashes and dust,
And the blood of the Paduan people in my wine-press was as must;
But, howsoe'er he may vanquish, man's day will have its close,
And the darkness gather about him, the night no mortal knows.
I feel the clutch of its shadows about me coil and creep,
The folds of a power supernal that shall wrap me in endless sleep.
But out of the gloom there rises, like the sun in the morning sky,
A king who shall come hereafter, one far greater than I;
For where I spared he shall slaughter, and where I saved he shall slay;
His deeds shall kindle the darkness; his doom shall blacken the day;
But I shall share in his glory, his name shall be linked with mine,
And go down through all the ages as a symbol and a sign!"

Then the fair handmaid Ildico-slipped out as she slipped in,
Leaving the scourge of the nations sprawled on his leopard skin
Where, stark in death, they found him when the darkness had withdrawn,
And down from the mountain passes stole in the wind of the dawn.
Then there wavered the sound of wailing far over moor and weald,
And they bore the bulk of his body forth on a massy shield;.
And they shaped for his clay a casket of iron and silver and gold,
And they set in his clenchèd fingers the sword of Mars to hold;
And for sepulture they fashioned a grave that was deep and wide,
Heaped with the sack of cities, of many a kingdomside;
And score upon score of captives they slew, lest he alone
Fare into the outer vastness, into the great unknown!

And that was the end of horror, aye, that was the end of dread!
Yet we to-day remember the prophecy of the dead.
There are wings as the wings of vultures sweeping athwart the sun,
And the world knows anew the menace of Attila the Hun!