They rose to where their sovran eagle sails,
⁠They kept their faith, their freedom, on the height,
⁠Chaste, frugal, savage, arm'd 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 thro' the vales.
O smallest among peoples! rough rock-throne
⁠Of freedom! warriors beating back the swarm
⁠Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years,
Great Tsernagora! never since thine own
⁠Black ridges drew the cloud and brake the storm
⁠Has breathed a race of mightier mountaineers.