XXX.
Nor does the gallant foe resign,
Even while his hopes and strength decline,
A tame inglorious prize;—
Long, long on Britain’s rallied line
The deadly fire he plies;
Long, long where Britain’s banners shine
He vainly toils and dies!
Ne’er to a battle’s fiercer groan
Did mountain echo roar,
Nor ever evening blush upon
A redder field of gore.
But feebler now, and feebler still,
The panting French assail the hill,
And weaker grows their cannon’s roar,
And thinner falls their missile shower,
Fainter their clanging steel;
The hot and furious fit is o’er,
They shout—they charge—they stand no more—
And staggering in the slippery gore,
Their very leaders reel.
XXXI.
But shooting high and rolling far,
What new and horrid face of war
Now flushes on the sight?
’Tis France, as furious she retires,
That wreaks, in desolating fires,
The vengeance of her flight.
Already parch’d by summer’s sun,
The grassy vale the flames o’er-run;
And, sweeping wreath’d and light
Before the wind, the thickets seize,
And climb the dry and withered trees,
In flashes long and bright.
Oh! ’twas a scene sublime and dire,
To see that billowy sea of fire,
Rolling its flaky tide
O’er cultured field and tangled wood,
And drowning in the flaming flood
The seasons’ hope and pride!
XXXII.
From Talavera’s wall and tower
And from the mountain’s height,
Where they had stood for many an hour
To view the varying fight,
Burghers and peasants in amaze
Behold their groves and vineyards blaze:
Calm they had view’d the bloody fray,
And little thought that France’s groan
And England’s sigh, ere close of day,
Should mingle with their own!
But ah! far other cries than these
Are wafted on the dismal breeze—
Groans, not the wounded’s lingering groan—
Shrieks, not the shriek of death alone—
But groan, and shriek, and yell,
Of terror, torture, and despair;
Such as ’twould chill the heart to hear
And freeze the tongue to tell—
When to the very field of fight,
Dreadful alike in sound and sight,
The conflagration spread,
Involving in its fiery wave
The brave and reliques of the brave—
The dying and the dead!
XXXIII.
And now again the evening sheds
Her dewy veil on Teio’s side,
And from the Sierra’s rocky heads
The giant shadows stride;
And all is dim and dark again—
Save here and there upon the plain,
Still flash the baleful fires,
Across the umber’d face of night
Casting a dull and flickering light,
As if from funeral pyres.
But since the close of yester-e’en
How alter’d is the martial scene!
Again, in night’s surrounding veil,
France moves her busy bands—but now
She comes not, venturous, to assail
The victors in their guarded vale,
Or on the mountain’s brow—
Dash’d from her triumph’s windy car
She mourns the wayward fate of war,
And baffled and dishearten’d, o’er
Alberche’s stream and from his shore,
With silent haste she speeds,
Nor dares, ev’n at that midnight hour,
To snatch the rest she needs;
Far from the field where late she fought—
The tents where late she lay—
With rapid step and humbled thought,
All night she holds her way:
Leaving, to Britain’s conquering sons,
Standards rent and ponderous guns,
The trophies of the fray!
The weak, the wounded, and the slain—
The triumph of the battle plain—
The glory of the day!
XXXIV.
I would not check the tender sigh,
Nor chide the pious tear,
That heaves the heart and dims the eye
For friend or kinsman dear;
Ev’n when their honoured reliques lie
On victory’s proudest bier;
But I would say, for those that die
In honour’s high career,
For those in glory’s grave who sleep,
Weep fondly, but, exulting, weep!
More freshly from the untimely tomb
Renown’s eternal laurels bloom
With sullen cypress twined.
Fortune is fickle and unsure,
And worth and fame to be secure
Must be in death enshrin’d!