VI
"THE MARTIAL COURAGE OF A DAY IS VAIN"
Composed 1810?[A]—Published 1815
The martial courage of a day is vain,
An empty noise of death the battle's roar,
If vital hope be wanting to restore,
Or fortitude be wanting to sustain,
Armies or kingdoms. We have heard a strain 5
Of triumph, how the labouring Danube bore
A weight of hostile corses: drenched with gore
Were the wide fields, the hamlets heaped with slain.
Yet see (the mighty tumult overpast)
Austria a Daughter of her Throne hath sold! 10
And her Tyrolean Champion we behold
Murdered, like one ashore by shipwreck cast,
Murdered without relief. Oh! blind as bold,
To think that such assurance can stand fast!
FOOTNOTES:
[A] I retain this Tyrolese sonnet amongst the others belonging to the same theme; but, as Hofer was shot in 1810, it was probably written in that year.—Ed.
I append to this series of sonnets on the Tyrol and the Tyrolese the translation of a paper contributed by Alois Brandl, a Tyrolean, to the Neue Freie Presse of October 22, 1880. Herr Brandl was for some time in England investigating the traces of a German literary influence on Coleridge, Wordsworth, and their contemporaries.
"It was in the year 1809; Napoleon was at the height of his career of victory; and England alone of all his opponents held the supremacy at sea. For years the English were the only representatives of freedom in Europe. At last it seemed that two fortunate allies arose to join their cause—the insurgents in Spain and in the little land of Tyrol. No wonder then that now British poets sympathised with the victors at the hill of Isel, and praised their courage and their leaders, and at last, when they were overcome by superior forces, laid the laurel wreath of tragic heroism on their graves.