But first as he flew, I forgot to say,
That he hovered a moment upon his way,
To look upon Leipsic plain;
And so sweet to his eye was its sulphury glare,
And so soft to his ear was the cry of despair,
That he perched on a mountain of slain;
And he gazed with delight from its growing height,
Nor often on earth had he seen such a sight,
Nor his work done half as well:
40For the field ran so red with the blood of the dead,
That it blushed like the waves of Hell!
Then loudly, and wildly, and long laughed he:
"Methinks they have little need here of me!"
6.
Long he looked down on the hosts of each clime,
While the warriors hand to hand were—
Gaul—Austrian and Muscovite heroes sublime,
And—(Muse of Fitzgerald arise with a rhyme!)
A quantity of Landwehr![37]
Gladness was there,
50For the men of all might and the monarchs of earth,
There met for the wolf and the worm to make mirth,
And a feast for the fowls of the Air!
7.
But he turned aside and looked from the ridge
Of hills along the river,
And the best thing he saw was a broken bridge,[38]
Which a Corporal chose to shiver;
Though an Emperor's taste was displeased with his haste,
The Devil he thought it clever;
And he laughed again in a lighter strain,
60O'er the torrent swoln and rainy,
When he saw "on a fiery steed" Prince Pon,
In taking care of Number One—
Get drowned with a great many!
8.
But the softest note that soothed his ear
Was the sound of a widow sighing;
And the sweetest sight was the icy tear,
Which Horror froze in the blue eye clear
Of a maid by her lover lying—
As round her fell her long fair hair,
70And she looked to Heaven with that frenzied air
Which seemed to ask if a God were there!
And stretched by the wall of a ruined hut,
With its hollow cheek, and eyes half shut,
A child of Famine dying:
And the carnage begun, when resistance is done,
And the fall of the vainly flying!
9.
Then he gazed on a town by besiegers taken,
Nor cared he who were winning;
But he saw an old maid, for years forsaken,
80Get up and leave her spinning;
And she looked in her glass, and to one that did pass,
She said—"pray are the rapes beginning?"[39]
10.