The spirit is the thing. When you say "'Alt!"

My 'eart—I mean my heart—is at the double.

You, gazing only at the outward shell

That nothing of this secret fire divulges,

See only raw civilians, heaped pell-mell,

Having the kind of chest that peace indulges;

Viewed from one end our lines are like a swell

On the deep ocean, full of kinks and bulges.

You bid us wheel. At once ensues a rout

That no hussar could compass with his sabre;