Our fathers bowed and worshipped there; As blaze through smoke the conquering fires, DRUIDS. We go, as our fathers went before, 'Tis the holy time -'tis the night of May. ONE OF THE PEOPLE. Have you lost all sense of fear? Hath come: our wives, our babes they slay, Our old religion fades away. CHORUS OF WOMEN. Alas, alas! a heavy day; For fallen are we, and proud are they. Our roofs they burn, our babes they slay, Our old religion dies away. Bring wood for the torches secretly: We will lie unseen In the copse-wood green, And steal along by its shadowy skreen- Our children and our wives to ward, While we move by night to the hill-top hoar, CHORUS OF WATCHERS. Through the tangled forest here Watch with wakeful eye and ear; Watch in silence through the night, While afar, on yon lone height, WATCHER. Let us mock the mock-believers, Act the legends we disdain ; With stake, and rake, and torch, and clamour, All will seem the work of glamour. 'Mid the shout, and rout, and revelry, While they dream of their hell and its devilry, Through the mountain pass neglected, Night-crows hoarse and echoes hollow, Wings and noises of the night CHORUS OF WATCHERS. From the brushwood and the brake, With laugh, and scream, and revelry, With stake, and rake, and torch uplift', And ev'ry sound of fear and fright, DRUID. FATHER OF ALL, to Thee we pray,, By night in secret insecure But the darkness is like day, If the heart within be pure; What they do thou dost permit, As glows through smoke the bursting light, And then, though dimmed each ancient rite, Oh who can take thy light away? A CHRISTIAN. Help, oh help, the hill's enchanted, Look! what features and what frames! Through them shining see! - the flames! Swift and swifter, upward streaming, Men half wolves, and dragon women! What a scream! - what a shout. From the devilish rout! And see where the devil spits fire from above, CHORUS OF THE CHRISTIAN GUARD. And the devil spitting fire from above, And the hell-spawn fry below that move, Through smoke the conquering flame burns bright, And then- though dimmed each ancient rite, |