Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

   And here and there, as up the crags you spring,
   Mark many rude-carved crosses near the path;
   Yet deem not these devotion’s offering —
   These are memorials frail of murderous wrath;
   For wheresoe’er the shrieking victim hath
   Poured forth his blood beneath the assassin’s knife,
   Some hand erects a cross of mouldering lath;
   And grove and glen with thousand such are rife
Throughout this purple land, where law secures not life!