XXVIII.
In vain.—New hopes and fresher force
Inspirit France, and urge her course,
A torrent, rapid, wild, and hoarse,
On Britain’s wavering train.
As when, before the wintery skies,
The struggling forests sink and rise,
And rise and sink again,
While the gale scatters as it flies
Their ruins o’er the plain;
Before the tempest of her foes,
So England sank, and England rose,
And, though still rooted in the vale,
Strew’d her rent branches on the gale.
Then, Wellesley! on thy tortured thought
With ripening hopes of glory fraught,
What honest anguish crost!
Oh, how thy generous bosom burn’d,
To see the tide of victory turn’d,
And Spain and England lost!—
Lost—but that, as the peril great
And rising with the storms of fate,
His rapid genius soars,
Sees, at a glance, his whole resource,
Drains from each stronger point its force,
And on the weaker pours:
Present where’er his soldiers bleed,
He rushes thro’ the fray,
And, (so the doubtful chances need,)
In high emprize and desperate deed,
Squanders himself away!