Part 39

John Johnson, seeing their extreme dismay, Though little versed in feelings oriental, Suggested some slight comfort in his way: Don Juan, who was much more sentimental, Swore they should see him by the dawn of day, Or that the Russian army should repent all: And, strange to say, they found some consolation In this—for females like exaggeration.

And then with tears, and sighs, and some slight kisses, They parted for the present—these to await, According to the artillery’s hits or misses, What sages call Chance, Providence, or Fate (Uncertainty is one of many blisses, A mortgage on Humanity’s estate)— While their beloved friends began to arm, To burn a town which never did them harm.

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 Job,— What was ’t to him to hear two women sob?

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, We only can but talk of escalade, Bombs, drums, guns, bastions, batteries, bayonets, bullets,— Hard words, which stick in the soft Muses’ gullets.

O, thou eternal Homer! who couldst charm All ears, though long; all ages, though so short, By merely wielding with poetic arm 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:—

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;

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 substratum. 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.

O, ye great bulletins of Bonaparte! O, ye less grand long lists of kill’d and wounded! Shade of Leonidas, who fought so hearty, When my poor Greece was once, as now, surrounded! O, Caesar’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.

When I call ‘fading’ martial immortality, I mean, that every age and every year, And almost every day, in sad reality, Some sucking hero is compell’d to rear, Who, when we come to sum up the totality Of deeds to human happiness most dear, Turns out to be a butcher in great business, Afflicting young folks with a sort of dizziness.

Medals, rank, ribands, lace, embroidery, scarlet, Are things immortal to immortal man, As purple to the Babylonian harlot: An uniform to boys is like a fan To women; there is scarce a crimson varlet But deems himself the first in Glory’s van. But Glory’s glory; and if you would find What that is—ask the pig who sees the wind!

At least he feels it, and some say he sees, Because he runs before it like a pig; Or, if that simple sentence should displease, Say, that he scuds before it like a brig, A schooner, or—but it is time to ease This Canto, ere my Muse perceives fatigue. The next shall ring a peal to shake all people, Like a bob-major from a village steeple.

Hark! through the silence of the cold, dull night, The hum of armies gathering rank on rank! Lo! dusky masses steal in dubious sight Along the leaguer’d wall and bristling bank Of the arm’d river, while with straggling light The stars peep through the vapours dim and dank, Which curl in curious wreaths:—how soon the smoke Of Hell shall pall them in a deeper cloak!

Here pause we for the 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 more, The death-cry drowning in the battle’s roar.

CANTO THE EIGHTH.

O 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.

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

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.

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.

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 watchword till the future shall be free.

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 thick’ning 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, 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 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.

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 riband at the breast!

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 Your wars eternally, besides enjoying Half-pay for life, make mankind worth destroying.