THEY rose to where their sovran eagle sails, They kept their faith, their freedom, on the height, Chaste, frugal, savage, armed by day and night Against the Turk; whose inroad nowhere scales Their headlong passes, but his footstep fails, And red with blood the Crescent reels from fight Before their dauntless hundreds, in prone flight By thousands down the crags and through the vales. O smallest among peoples! rough rock-throne Of freedom! warriors beating back the swarm Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years, Great Tsernogora! never since thine own Black ridges drew the cloud and brake the storm Has breathed a race of mightier mountaineers. |