And near, the beat of the alarming drum
Roused up the soldier ere the morning star;
While throng'd the citizens with terror dumb,
225 Or whispering, with white lips?'The foe! They come! they come!'
26
And wild and high the 'Cameron's gathering' rose! The war-note of Lochiel,8 which Albyn's? hills Scotland's
Have heard, and heard, too, have her Saxon foes:?
How in the noon of night that pibroch9 thrills,
7. The duke of Brunswick, nephew of George III 8. 'Cameron's gathering' is the clan song of the of England, was killed in the battle of Quatre Bras. Camerons, whose chief was called 'Lochiel,' after
His father, commanding the Prussian army against his estate.
Napoleon, had been killed at Auerstedt in 1806 9. Bagpipe music, usually warlike in character.
(line 205).
.
CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE, CANTO 1 / 62 5
230 Savage and shrill! But with the breath which fills Their mountain-pipe, so fill the mountaineers With the fierce native daring which instils The stirring memory of a thousand years,
And Evan's, Donald's1 fame rings in each clansman's ears!
27
235 And Ardennes2 waves above them her green leaves, Dewy with nature's tear-drops, as they pass, Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves, Over the unreturning brave,?alas! Ere evening to be trodden like the grass
240 Which now beneath them, but above shall grow In its next verdure, when this fiery mass Of living valour, rolling on the foe
And burning with high hope, shall moulder cold and low.
28
Last noon beheld them full of lusty life,
245 Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay, The midnight brought the signal-sound of strife, The morn the marshalling in arms,?the day Battle's magnificently-stern array! The thunder-clouds close o'er it, which when rent
250 The earth is covered thick with other clay, Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent, Rider and horse,?friend, foe,?in one red burial blent!
$ * >*
[NAPOLEON]
36
There sunk the greatest, nor the worst of men,3 Whose spirit antithetically mixt One moment of the mightiest, and again On little objects with like firmness fixt,
320 Extreme in all things! hadst thou been betwixt, Thy throne had still been thine, or never been; For daring made thy rise as fall: thou seek'st Even now to re-assume the imperial mien,? character
And shake again the world, the Thunderer of the scene!
37
325 Conqueror and captive of the earth art thou! She trembles at thee still, and thy wild name Was ne'er more bruited in men's minds than now That thou art nothing, save the jest of Fame,
1. Sir Evan and Donald Cameron, famous warri-mans against the Roman encroachments?I have ors in the Stuart cause in the Jacobite risings of ventured to adopt the name connected with nobler
1689 and 1745. associations than those of mere slaughter [Byron's
2. The wood of Soignes is supposed to be a rem-note], Orlando Innamorato is a 15th-century Italnant of the 'forest of Ardennes' famous in ian epic of love and adventure.
Boiardo's Orlando, and immortal in Shakespeare's 3. Napoleon, here portrayed with many character-
As You Like It. It is also celebrated in Tacitus as istics of the Byronic hero.
being the spot of successful defence by the Ger
.
62 6 / GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON . ?-?'
Who wooed thee once, thy vassal, and became
330 The flatterer of thy fierceness, till thou wert A god unto thyself; nor less the same To the astounded kingdoms all inert,
