The Poetical Works of Lord Byron

In former works, made new, prepared fascines, And all kinds of benevolent machines.

XLVIII.

"Tis thus the spirit of a single mind

Makes that of multitudes take one direction, As roll the waters to the breathing wind,

Or roams the herd beneath the bull's protecOr as a little dog will lead the blind, [tion; Or a bell-wether form the flock's connection By tinkling sounds, when they go forth to victual: Such is the sway of your great men o'er little. XLIX.

The whole camp rung with joy: you would have thought

That they were going to a marriage feast (This metaphor, I think, holds good as aught, Since there is discord after both, at least): There was not now a luggage-boy but sought Danger and spoil with ardour much increased; And why? because a little-odd-old man, Stript to his shirt, was come to lead the van.

But so it was; and every preparation
Was made with all alacrity: the first
Detachment of three columns took its station,
And waited but the signal's voice to burst
Upon the foe: the second's ordination

Was also in three columns, with a thirst
For glory, gaping o'er a sea of slaughter:
The third, in columns two, attack'd by water.

LI.

New batteries were erected, and was held
A general council, in which unanimity,
That stranger to most councils, here prevail'd,
As sometimes happens in a great extremity;
And every difficulty being dispell'd,

Glory began to dawn with due sublimity,
White Souvaroff, determined to obtain it,
Was teaching his recruits to use the bayonet.*

LII.

It is an actual fact, that he, commander-
In-chief, in proper person deign'd to drill
The awkward squad, and could afford to
squander

His time, a corporal's duty to fulfil ;
Just as you'd break a sucking salamander

To swallow flame, and never take it ill: He show'd them how to mount a ladder (which Was not like Jacob's), or to cross a ditch.

LIII.

Also he dress'd up, for the nonce, fascines

Like men, with turbans, scimitars, and dirks, And made them charge with bayonet these machines,

By way of lesson against actual Turks.

• Fact: Suwarrow did this in person.

Upon them his slow brow and piercing eye :-
Whence come ye?'- From Constantinople

LXV.

Captives just now escaped,' was the reply. [last, Johnson, who knew by this long colloquy
What are ye?'-' What you see us.' Briefly
pass'd

This dialogue; for he who answer'd, knew
To whom he spoke, and made his words but few.

LX.

Himself a favourite, ventured to address
Suwarrow, though engaged, with accents high.
In his resumed amusement. 'I confess
My debt in being thus allow'd to die
Among the foremost; but if you'd express
Explicitly our several posts, my friend

'Your names?'-'Mine's Johnson, and my And self would know what duty to attend.' comrade's Juan;

The other two are women, and the third

Is neither man nor woman.' The chief threw on

LXVI.

The party a slight glance, and said, 'I have Right: I was busy, and forgot. Why, yen

heard

Your name before, the second is a new one :
To bring the other three here was absurd:
But let that pass:-1 think I've heard your name
In the Nikolaiew regiment?'-' The same.'

LXI.

Will join your former regiment, which should
be

Now under arms. No! Katskoff, take him to-
His post, I mean the regiment Nikolaiew.
(Here he call'd up a Polish orderly)
The stranger stripling may remain with me:
He's a fine boy. The women may be sent

'You served at Widdin?'-'Yes.'-'You led To the other baggage, or to the sick tent."

LXXVII.

Suwarrow-who but saw things in the gross,
Being much too gross to see them in detail;
Who calculated life as so much dross,
And as the wind a widow'd nation's wail,
And cared as little for his army's loss

(So that their efforts should at length prevail) As wife and friends did for the boils of JobWhat was't to him to hear two women sob? LXXVIII.

Nothing.-The work of glory still went on
In preparations for a cannonade
As terrible as that of Ilion,

If Homer had found mortars ready made; But now, instead of slaying Priam's son, Bombs, drums, guns, bastions, batteries, bayWe only can but talk of escalade, Hard words, which stick in the soft Muses' onets, bullets; [gullets.

LXXIX.

O thou eternal Homer! who couldst charm
All ears, though long; all ages, though so
By merely wielding, with poetic arm, [short,
Arms to which men will never more resort,
Unless gunpowder should be found to harm

Much less than is the hope of every court, Which now is leagued young freedom to annoy; But they will not find Liberty a Troy ;

LXXX.

O thou eternal Homer! I have now

To paint a siege, wherein more men were slain, With deadlier engines and a speedier blow, Than in thy Greek gazette of that campaign; And yet, like all men else, I must allow,

To vie with thee would be about as vain As for a brook to cope with ocean's flood But still we moderns equal you in blood;

LXXXI.

If not in poetry, at least in fact ;

And fact is truth, the grand desideratum! Of which, howe'er the Muse describes each act, There should be ne'ertheless a slight substra

tum.

But now the town is going to be attack'd;

Great deeds are doing-how shall I relate 'em? Souls of immortal generals! Phoebus watches To colour up his rays from your despatches.

LXXXII.

O ye great bulletins of Buonaparte !

O ye less grand long listsof kill'd and wounded. Shade of Leonidas! who fought so hearty,

When my poor Greece was once, as now, surrounded!

O Cæsar's Commentaries! now impart, ye
Shadows of glory! (lest I be confounded),
A portion of your fading twilight hues,
So beautiful, so fleeting, to the Muse.

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 spar
A higher title, or a loftier station, [stare,
Though they may make Corruption gape

All was prepared-the fire, the sword, the men Yet in the end, except in Freedom's battles, To wield them in their terrible array:

The army, like a lion from his den,

March'd forth with nerves 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

Are nothing but a child of Murder's rattles.

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 words
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 watchword till the future shall be free.

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 em-
braced,

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

Which rock'd as 'twere beneath the mighty To the true portrait of one battle-field. [noises; Past, present, and to come;-but all may yield While the whole rampant blazed like Etna, when The restless Titan hiccups in his den.

VIII.

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!'*

IX.

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,
Though led by Arseniew, that great son of
slaughter,

As brave as ever faced both bomb 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
No harm unto a right legitimate head: [mean

'Ashes to ashes-why not lead to lead?'

• Allah Hu! is properly the war-cry of the Mussulmans: and they dwell long on the last syllable, which gives it a very wild and peculiar effect.

To wit, the Deity's; this is perhaps as pretty a pedigree for murder as ever was found out by Garter King at Arms. What would have been said had any free-spoken people discovered such a lineage?

'But Thy most dreadful instrument,
In working out a pure intent,

Is man array'd for mutual slaughter:
Yea, Carnage is Thy daughter!

WORDSWORTH'S Thanksgiving Ode.

XIII.

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 riband at the breast!

XIV.

Yet I love glory :-glory's a great thing:
Think what it is 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
Half-pay for life, make mankind worth destroy-
Your wars eternally, besides enjoying [ing.

XV.

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.

XVI.

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 : [fault.
Hounds, when the huntsman tumbles, are at

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The Poetical Works of Lord Byron: Reprinted from the Original Editions, with ...