The night was dark, and the thick mist allow'd
Nought to be seen, save the artillery's flame,
Which arch'd the horizon like a fiery cloud,
And in the Danube's waters shone the same,
A mirror'd hell! The volleying roar, and loud
Long booming of each peal on peal, o'ercame
The ear far more than thunder; for Heaven's flashes
Spare, or smite rarely-Man's make millions ashes!
The column order'd on the assault scarce pass'd
Beyond the Russian batteries a few toises,
When up the bristling Moslem rose at last,
Answering the Christian thunders with like voices
Then one vast fire, air, earth, and stream embraced,
Which rock'd as 'twere beneath the mighty noises;
While the whole rampart blazed like Etna, when
The restless Titan hiccups in his den.
And one enormous shout of "Allah!" rose
In the same moment, loud as even the roar
Of war's most mortal engines, to their foes
Hurling defiance: city, stream, and shore
Resounded "Allah!" and the clouds, which close
With thickening canopy the conflict o'er,
Vibrate to the Eternal name. Hark! through
All sounds it pierceth, "Allah! Allah! Hu!"
The columns were in movement, one and all:
But, of the portion which attack'd by water,
Thicker than leaves the lives began to fall, [ter,
Though led by Arseniew, that great son of slaugh
As brave as ever faced both boom and ball.
"Carnage (so Wordsworth tells you) is God's
daughter: "
If he speak truth, she is Christ's sister, and
Just now behaved as in the Holy Land.
The Prince de Ligne was wounded in the knee; Count Chapeau-Bras, too, had a ball between His cap and head, which proves the head to be Aristocratic as was ever seen,
Because it then received no injury
More than the cap; in fact the ball could mean No harm unto a right legitimate head: "Ashes to ashes "-why not lead to lead ?
Also the General Markow, Brigadier,
Insisting on removal of the prince,
Amidst some groaning thousands dying near,—
All common fellows, who might writhe and wince.
And shriek for water into a deaf ear,-
The General Markow, who could thus evince
His sympathy for rank, by the same token,
To teach him greater, had his own leg broken.
XII.
Three hundred cannon threw up their emetic,
And thirty thousand muskets flung their pills
Like hail, to make a bloody diuretic.
Mortality! thou hast thy monthly bills;
Thy plagues, thy famines, thy physicians, yet tick
Like the death-watch, within our ears the ills
Past, present, and to come ;-but all may yield
To the true portrait of one battle-field.
There the still varying pangs, which multiply
Until their very number makes men hard
By the infinities of agony,
Which meet the gaze, whate'er it may regard→ The groan, the roll in dust, the all-white eye
Turn'd back within its socket,-these reward Your rank and file by thousands, while the rest May win, perhaps, a ribband at the breast!
Yet I love glory; glory's a great thing;
Think what it s to be, in your old age,
Maintain'd at the expense of your good king!
A moderate pension shakes full many a sage,
And heroes are but made for bards to sing,
Which is still better; thus in verse to wage
Your wars eternally, besides, enjoying
Half-pay for life, makes mankind worth destroying
The troops, already disembark'd, push'd on
To take a battery on the right; the others,
Who landed lower down, their landing done,
Had set to work as briskly as their brothers:
Being grenadiers, they mounted, one by one,
Cheerful as children climb the breasts of mothers
O'er the entrenchment and the palisade,
Quite orderly, as if upon parade.
And this was admirable; for so hot
The fire was, that were red Vesuvius loaded, Besides its lava, with all sorts of shot
And shells, or hells, it could not more have goaded.
Of officers, a third fell on the spot,
A thing which victory by no means boded
To gentlemen engaged in the assault:
Hounds, when the huntsman tumbles, are at fault.
But here I leave the general concern,
To track our hero on his path of fame:
He must his laurels separately earn;
For fifty thousand heroes, name by name,
Though all deserving equally to turn
A couplet, or an elegy to claim,
Would form a lengthy lexicon of glory,
And, what is worse still, a much longer story:
And therefore we must give the greater number
To the gazette-which doubtless fairly dealt
By the deceased, who lie in famous slumber
In ditches, fields, or wheresoe'er they felt
Though 'twas Don Juan's first of fields, and though
The nightly muster and the silent march
In the chill dark, when courage does not glow
So much as under a triumphal arch,
Perhaps might make him shiver, yawn, or throw
A glance on the dull clouds (as thick as starch,
Which stiffen'd heaven) as if he wish'd for day ;-
Yet for all this he did not run away.
Indeed he could not. But what if he had?
There have been and are heroes who begun
With something not much better, or as bad:
Frederic the Great from Molwitz deign'd to run,
For the first and last time; for, like a pad
Or hawk, or bride, most mortals, after one
Warm bout, are broken into their new tricks,
And fight like fiends for pay or politics.
He was what Erin calls, in her sublime
Old Erse or Irish, or it may be Punic,
(The antiquarians who can settle time,
Which settles all things, Romans, Greek, or Runic,
Swear that Pat's language sprung from the same clime
With Hannibal, and wears the Tyrian tunic
Of Dido's alphabet; and this is rational
As any other notion, and not national;)—
But Juan was quite "a broth of a boy,"
A thing of impulse, and a child of song:
Now swimming in the sentiment of joy,
Or the sensation, (if that phrase seem wrong,)
And afterwards, if he must needs destroy,
In such good company as always throng
To battles, sieges, and that kind of pleasure,
No less delighted to employ his leisure;
But always without malice. If he warr'd
Or loved, it was with what we call "the best
Intentions," which form all mankind's trump card,
To be produced when brought up to the test.
Their clay for the last time their souls encumber;-The statesman, hero, harlot, lawyer-ward
Thrice happy he whose name has been well spelt
In the despatch; I knew a man whose loss
Was printed Grove, although his name was Grose.3
Off each attack when people are in quest
Of their designs, by saying they meant well;
"Tis pity" that such meaning should pave hell.”
XXVI.
I almost lately have begun to doubt
Whether hell's pavement-if it be so pavedMust not have latterly been quite worn out,
Not by the numbers good intent hath saved, But by the mass who go below without
Those ancient good intentions, which once shaved And smooth'd the brimstone of that street of hell Which bears the greatest likeness to Pall Mall.
Juan, by some strange chance, which oft divides
Warrior from warrior in their grim career,
Like chastest wives from constant husbands' sides,
Just at the close of the first bridal year,
By one of those odd turns of fortune's tides,
Was on a sudden rather puzzled here,
When, after a good deal of heavy firing,
He found himself alone, and friends retiring.
I don't know how the thing occurr'd-it might
Be that the greater part were kill'd or wounded,
And that the rest had faced unto the right
About; a circumstance which has confounded
Cæsar himself, who, in the very sight
Of his whole army, which so much abounded
In courage, was obliged to snatch a shield
And rally back his Romans to the field.
Juan, who had no shield to snatch, and was
No Cæsar, but a fine young lad, who fought,
He knew not why, arriving at this pass,
Stopp'd for a minute, as perhaps he ought
For a much longer time; then, like an ass-
(Start not, kind reader; since great Homer thought
This simile enough for Ajax, Juan
Perhaps may find it better than a new one :)—
Then, like an ass, he went upon his way,
And, what was stranger, never look'd behind;
But seeing, flashing forward, like the day
Over the hills, a fire enough to blind
Those who dislike to look upon a fray,
He stumbled on, to try if he could find
A path, to add his own slight arm and forces
To corps, the greater part of which were corses.
Perceiving then no more the commandant
Of his own corps, nor even the corps, which had
Quite disappear'd-the gods know how! (I can't
Account for every thing which may look bad
In history; but we at least may grant
It was not marvellous that a mere lad,
In search of glory, should look on before,
Nor care a pinch of snuff about his corps :)—
Perceiving nor commander nor commanded,
And left at large, like a young heir, to make
His way to where he knew not-single-handed;
As travellers follow over bog and brake,
An "ignis fatuus," or as sailors stranded,
Unto the nearest hut themselves betake,
So Juan, following honor and his nose,
By Jove! he was a noble fellow, Johnson,
And though his name than Ajax or Achilles
Sounds less harmonious, underneath the sun soon
We shall not see his likeness: he could kill his
Man quite as quietly as blows the monsoon
Her steady breath, (which some months the same
Seldom he varied feature, hue, or muscle, [still is ;)
Rush'd where the thickest fire announced most foes. And could be very busy without bustle:
And that if Blucher, Bulow, Gneisenau,
And God knows who besides in “au" and ow,*
Had not come up in time to cast an awe
Into the hearts of those who fought till now
As tigers combat with an empty craw,
The Duke of Wellington had ceased to show
His orders, also to receive his pensions,
Which are the heaviest that our history mentions.
L.
But never mind;-"God save the king!" and kings For if he don't, I doubt if men will longer.
I think I hear a little bird, who sings,
The people by and by will be the stronger:
The veriest jade will wince whose harness wrings
So much into the raw as quite to wrong her
Beyond the rules of posting,-and the mob
At last fall sick of imitating Job.
Was beaten, though the Prussians say so too;- At times would curdle o'er some heavy groan.
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