Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

   Her lover sinks—­she sheds no ill-timed tear;
   Her chief is slain—­she fills his fatal post;
   Her fellows flee—­she checks their base career;
   The foe retires—­she heads the sallying host: 
   Who can appease like her a lover’s ghost? 
   Who can avenge so well a leader’s fall? 
   What maid retrieve when man’s flushed hope is lost? 
   Who hang so fiercely on the flying Gaul,
Foiled by a woman’s hand, before a battered wall?