Ariana Malthaner
Isabella’s next two stanzas from Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage concern a Gothic Gladiator and his battle at the coliseum. The only particular thing of note is that in the third line, Isabella had clearly forgotten the word ‘death’ initially and had to squeeze it in above the line.
I see before me the gladiator lie:
He leans upon his hand – his manly brow
Consents to, death but conquers agony
And his droop’d head sinks gradually low-
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,
Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now
The arena swims around him – he is gone,
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hail’d the wretch who won.
He heard it, but he heeded not – his eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far away:
He reck’d not of the life he lost nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother – he, their sire,
Butcher’d to make a Roman holiday –
All this rush’d with his blood — shall he expire
And unavenged? – Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire!