Suddenly the distant boom of artillery broke from the citadel, and rolled along the sunlit valley and crystal river.  A universal wail burst from the exiles; it smote,—­it overpowered the heart of the ill-starred king, in vain seeking to wrap himself in Eastern pride or stoical philosophy.  The tears gushed from his eyes, and he covered his face with his hands.  The band wound slowly on through the solitary defiles; and that place where the king wept is still called The Last Sigh of the Moor.

Notes.—­Granada was the capital of an ancient Moorish kingdom of the same name, in the southeastern part of Spain.  The Darro River flows through it, emptying into the Xenil (or Jenil) just outside the city walls.  King Ferdinand of Spain drove out the Moors, and captured the city in 1492.

Marah.  See Exodus xv. 23.

Avila is an episcopal city in Spain, capital of a province of the same name.

The Te Deum is an ancient Christian hymn, composed by St. Ambrose; it is so called from the first Latin words, “Te Deum laudamus,” We praise thee, O God.

Mars, in mythology, the god of war.

The Alhambra is the ancient palace of the Moorish kings, at Granada.

Allah is the Mohammedan name for the Supreme Being.

Roland was a nephew of Charlemagne, or Charles the Great, emperor of the West and king of France.  He was one of the most famous knights of the chivalric romances.

The Alpuxarras is a mountainous region in the old province of Granada, where the Moors were allowed to remain some time after their subjugation by Ferdinand.

XCIV.  HAMLET’S SOLILOQUY. (339)

To be, or not to be; that is the question:—­
Whether ’t is nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?  To die,—­to sleep,—­
No more:  and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,—­’t is a consummation
Devoutly to be wished.  To die,—­to sleep:—­
To sleep! perchance to dream:—­ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.  There’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?  Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,—­
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveler returns,—­puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of? 
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. 
                             Shakespeare.—­Hamlet, Act iii, Scene i.