XV.
Spur on thy way!—since now thine ear
Has brook’d thy veterans’ wish to hear,
Who, as thy flight they eyed,
Exclaimed,—while tears of anguish came,
Wrung forth by pride and rage and shame,—
“Oh that he had but died!”
But yet, to sum this hour of ill,
Look, ere thou leav’st the fatal hill,
Back on yon broken ranks—
Upon whose wild confusion gleams
The moon, as on the troubled streams
When rivers break their banks,
And, to the ruin’d peasant’s eye,
Objects half seen roll swiftly by,
Down the dread current hurl’d—
So mingle banner, wain, and gun,
Where the tumultuous flight rolls on
Of warriors, who, when morn begun,
Defied a banded world.