VII.

The column ordered on the assault scarce passed
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 rocked as 'twere beneath the mighty noises;
While the whole rampart blazed like Etaa, 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 thick'ning canopy the conflict o'er,

Vibrate to the Eternal name.

Hark! through All sounds it pierceth “ Allah! Allah! Hu!"*

66

IX.

The columns were in movement one and all,
But of the portion which attacked 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. [daughter:" Carnage" (so Wordsworth tells you) "is God's If he speak truth, she is Christ's sister, and

66

Just now behaved as in the Holy Land.

* Allah Hu! is properly the war cry of the Musslemans, and they dwell long on the last syllable, which gives it a very wild and peculiar effect. "But thy most dreadful instrument "In working out a pure intent,

"Is man arrayed for mutual slaughter;

"Yea, Carnage is thy daughter!"

WORDSWORTH'S Thanksgiving Ode.

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?

X.

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?

XI.

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 musquets 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.

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
Turned back within its socket,-these reward
Your rank and file by thousands, while the rest
May win perhaps a ribbon at the breast!

XIV.

Yet I love Glory;-glory's a great thing;-
Think what it is to be in your old age
Maintained 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, make mankind worth destroying.

XV.

The troops, already disembarked, pushed 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 breast 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:

Hounds, when the huntsman tumbles, are at fault.

XVII.

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 léngthy lexicon of glory,
And what is worse still, a much longer story:

XVIII.

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
Their clay for the last time their souls encumber;-
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.*

XIX.

Juan and Johnson joined a certain corps,

And fought away with might and main, not knowing The way which they had never trod before,

And still less guessing where they might be going; But on they marched, dead bodies trampling o'er, Firing, and thrusting, slashing, sweating, glowing, But fighting thoughtlessly enough to win,

To their two selves, one whole bright bulletin.

A fact: see the Waterloo Gazettes. I recollect remarking at the time to a friend: "There is fame! a man is killed, his name is Grose, and they print it Grove. I was at College with the deceased, who was a very amiable and clever man, and his society in great request for his wit, gagety, and "chansons a boire."

XX.

Thus on they wallowed in the bloody mire

Of dead and dying thousands,-sometimes gaining A yard or two of ground, which brought them nigher To some odd angle for which all were straining; At other times, repulsed by the close fire,

Which really poured as if all Hell were raining, Instead of Heaven, they stumbled backwards o'er A wounded comrade, sprawling in his gore.

XXI.

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 stiffened Heaven) as if he wished for day;—
Yet for all this he did not run away:

XXII.

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: Frederick the Great from Molwitz deigned 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.

XXIII.

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, Roman, Greek, or Runic,