The frighten’d skies are red with bursting fire,
Warriors on warriors, heaps on heaps expire;
The cannon’s roar, the martial music’s sound;
The conq’rers’ shouts, and conquer’d’s groans confound.
The mighty hosts promiscuously engage,
And war terrific, burns with tenfold rage.
War! horrid war! whom Death to Pluto bore,
’Mids’t the dark caverns of th’ infernal shore;
A dreadful monster, at whose baleful birth,
Love, Peace, and Plenty, fled the groaning earth.30
His form was horrid, ghastly, grim, and fell,
No mortal man its terrors e’er can tell!
A wreath of skulls his iron temples bound,
Where’er he trod, red carnage dy’d the ground,—
All nature wither’d at his dire advance,
And nations sunk beneath his lurid glance.
Four raging tygers, with tremendous roar,
His sweeping car (a thund’ring cannon) bore;
Confusion, Flight, and Terror’s wild alarms,
Shrieking pursue his all-destroying arms.40
But to the view, the treach’rous demon show’d
A form that bright with glorious beauty glow’d;
And held, deceitful, in his bloody hand,
Giv’n by Ambition, an enchanted wand—
And this he wav’d! and, to the wond’ring eyes,
Sceptres, and crowns, and laurell’d wreaths would rise:—
But now he gloried o’er the Gallic plain,
To feast in triumph on the mighty slain.
IV.
O thou, Calliope, the heroes tell,
Who, bright with honour and with glory, fell;50
While Retrospection’s sweetly pensive tear,
Moistens the bays that blossom round their bier.
For them no friend can soothe the quiv’ring breath,
And give the last sad offices of death;
For them no prayers of pitying love are giv’n—
No priest consoling points the road to heav’n;
Their whit’ning bones no stately urn shall hide,—
No flatt’ring bust—no monument of pride;
’Mids’t piles of slaughter’d thousands lost, they lie,
By all forsaken, unregarded die.60
Yet each seem’d gladly to resign his breath,
And hail th’ approach of honourable death:
And still in death, o’er each undaunted face,
Nought but the pride of heroism you’d trace;—
Each dying warrior, welt’ring on the strand,
Still strain’d each nerve to grasp his broken brand.
V.
As Gordon, great in arms, whose glorious name
Was ever foremost of the sons of Fame,
(With that bright warmth of love and friendly fire,
Which only godlike Wellesley can inspire;)70
Besought his chief, who mingled with the strife,
Of danger heedless, to regard his life,
A ball, fast hissing on the airy tide,
Stretched the brave soldier by his leader’s side.
And glorious Canning, ere the shades of death
Had numb’d his arm, or stopt his fleeting breath,
Rais’d up his eyes to heav’n, and faintly cried,
“Ah, bless my chief”—and in that blessing died!
The brave Delancey left his native land,79
Young Hymen’s chaplet, and Love’s plighted hand—
He left them all!—for Honour’s notes afar
Proclaim’d the signal of reviving war:
Destruction hover’d where his falchion prest,
And Fate’s dark lightnings glitter’d round his crest.
But Death, with envy, saw his feats that day,
Another Death, he thought, had bore his pow’r away;
He rais’d his arm—he hurl’d the fatal dart,
And bad it moisten in the warrior’s heart;
Urg’d by the spectre’s hand, the weapon prest,89
Pierc’d the knight’s garb, and sunk within his breast,—
Adown his bosom stream’d the ebbing blood,
And life came rushing on the purple flood.
VI.
Two British heroes, of a meaner name,
That day shone proudly in the field of Fame;
Immortal Thonne, and bold Herculean Shawe,
Before whose arms, with fear and wond’ring awe,
Proud Gallia shrunk; while gasping on the strand,
Nine chieftains fell by Thonne’s destructive hand.
D’Avigné fam’d throughout the Gallic race,
For warlike honours, and for martial grace,100
Perceiv’d the victor glorying from afar,
And spurr’d his courser to the promis’d war:
So the fierce tyger stalks the Lybian plain,
Exulting o’er the savage nations slain,
While o’er each hill, and dark impervious wood,
They strive t’ escape the ravisher of blood:
Forth from the forest, gaunt with vengeful ire,
With stiffen’d mane, and eyes of living fire,
Rushes the lion with indignant glow,
And pours his fury on the raging foe.110
VII.
And first D’Avigné rais’d his mighty hand,
Bright with the terrors of the wounding brand;
Full on the dauntless Briton’s plumy crest
The blow descends,—then glances tow’rds the breast;
But there it stopt—the sabre’s parrying care
Gleam’d cautious down and turn’d the wound to air.
The Briton then his weapon rear’d on high,
And mark’d the Frenchman with a wary eye;
Then sudden swept his vengeful sword around,
And stretch’d his victim gasping on the ground;120
But, as he lay, ere yet the damps of death
Had numb’d his arm, or stopp’d his fleeting breath,
Against the charger of his conq’ring foe,
Full on the chest, he strikes the griding blow[21];
The noble beast, convuls’d by piercing pain,
Rear’d his proud form, and shook his flowing mane,
Then instant fell—and from the mortal wound,
The gushing life’s-blood issued on the ground;
Full on his noble master, ere he rose,
On ev’ry side resound a hundred blows—130
A hundred lances glitter at his breast—
A hundred strokes re-echo on his crest;
He strikes—retreats—advances—strives in vain,
And adds another to the heaps of slain.
Thus falls some tow’r which long has rear’d its form,
And mock’d the fury of the raging storm:
The fierce besiegers strive each art in vain,
To cast its lofty fabric on the plain;
At length the treach’rous mine, with secret care,
Beneath its strong foundations they prepare;140
With horrid crash, its crackling piles resound,
And fall, a mighty ruin on the ground.