Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Here

pause we for the

LXXXVII.

present-as even then

That awful pause, dividing life from death, Struck for an instant on the hearts of men,

Thousands of whom were drawing their last breath! A moment and all will be life again!

The march! the charge! the shouts of either faith! Hurra! and Allah! and-one moment moreThe death-cry drowning in the battle's roar.

END OF CANTO VII.

NOTE TO CANTO VII.

Note 1, page 368, stanza LI. Was teaching his recruits to use the bayonet. Fact: Souvaroff did this in person.

DON JUAN.

CANTO VIII.

I.

Oн blood and thunder! and oh blood and wounds!
These are but vulgar oaths, as you may deem,
Too gentle reader! and most shocking sounds:
And so they are; yet thus is glory's dream
Unriddled, and as my true muse expounds

At present such things, since they are her theme,
So be they her inspirers! Call them Mars,
Bellona, what you will-they mean but wars.

II.

All was prepared-the fire, the sword, the men
To wield them in their terrible array.
The army, like a lion from his den,

Marched forth with nerve and sinews bent to slay,

A human Hydra, issuing from its fen

To breathe destruction on its winding way, Whose heads were heroes, which cut off in vain, Immediately in others grew again.

III.

History can only take things in the gross;
But could we know them in detail, perchance,
In balancing the profit and the loss,

War's merit it by no means might enhance.
To waste so much gold for a little dross,

As hath been done, mere conquest to advance.
The drying up a single tear has more
Of honest fame, than shedding seas of gore.

IV.

And why? because it brings self-approbation;
Whereas the other, after all its glare,
Shouts, bridges, arches, pensions from a nation,
Which (it may be) has not much left to spare,
A higher title, or a loftier station,

Though they may make corruption gape or stare,
Yet, in the end, except in freedom's battles,
Are nothing but a child of murder's rattles.

V.

And such they are-and such they will be found.
Not so Leonidas and Washington,

Whose every battle-field is holy ground,

Which breathes of nations saved, not worlds undone. How sweetly on the ear such echoes sound! While the mere victor's may appal or stun The servile and the vain, such names will be A watch-word till the future shall be free.

« AnteriorContinuar »