Oh, solid Infantry! oh granite breasts!
Like Rome’s Triarians there they stand or fall.
Each flashing death-tube not an instant rests,
Save where the bayonet-flash may more appal.
By France outnumbered, yet till slaughtered all
The ground they’d hold. Their wounded and their dead
Are laid in one terrific line, a wall
Of dauntless valour: by Leucadia’s head,
So stood Leonides with Persia’s life-blood red!
XLVI.