Their arms, as hens their wings about their young,
LXVIII
O’er the promoted couple of brave men
Who were thus honoured by the greatest Chief
That ever peopled Hell with heroes slain,
Or plunged a province or a realm in grief.
Oh, foolish mortals! Always taught in vain!
Oh, glorious Laurel! since for one sole leaf
Of thine imaginary deathless tree,
Of blood and tears must flow the unebbing sea.639
LXIX
Suwarrow, who had small regard for tears,
And not much sympathy for blood, surveyed
The women with their hair about their ears
And natural agonies, with a slight shade
Of feeling: for however Habit sears
Men’s hearts against whole millions, when their trade
Is butchery, sometimes a single sorrow
Will touch even heroes—and such was Suwarrow.
LXX
He said—and in the kindest Calmuck tone—
“Why, Johnson, what the devil do you mean
By bringing women here? They shall be shown
All the attention possible, and seen
In safety to the waggons, where alone
In fact they can be safe. You should have been
Aware this kind of baggage never thrives;
Save wed a year, I hate recruits with wives”—
LXXI
“May it please your Excellency,” thus replied
Our British friend, “these are the wives of others,
And not our own. I am too qualified
By service with my military brothers
To break the rules by bringing one’s own bride
Into a camp: I know that nought so bothers
The hearts of the heroic on a charge,
As leaving a small family at large.
LXXII
“But these are but two Turkish ladies, who
With their attendant aided our escape,
And afterwards accompanied us through
A thousand perils in this dubious shape.
To me this kind of life is not so new;
To them, poor things, it is an awkward scrape:
I therefore, if you wish me to fight freely,
Request that they may both be used genteelly.”
LXXIII
Meantime these two poor girls, with swimming eyes,
Looked on as if in doubt if they could trust
Their own protectors; nor was their surprise
Less than their grief (and truly not less just)
To see an old man, rather wild than wise
In aspect, plainly clad, besmeared with dust,
Stripped to his waistcoat, and that not too clean,
More feared than all the Sultans ever seen.
LXXIV
For everything seemed resting on his nod,
As they could read in all eyes. Now to them,
Who were accustomed, as a sort of god,
To see the Sultan, rich in many a gem,
Like an imperial peacock stalk abroad
(That royal bird, whose tail’s a diadem,)
With all the pomp of Power, it was a doubt
How Power could condescend to do without.
LXXV
John Johnson, seeing their extreme dismay,
Though little versed in feelings oriental,
Suggested some slight comfort in his way:
Don Juan, who was much more sentimental,
Swore they should see him by the dawn of day,
Or that the Russian army should repent all:
And, strange to say, they found some consolation
In this—for females like exaggeration.
LXXVI
And then with tears, and sighs, and some slight kisses,
They parted for the present—these to await,
According to the artillery’s hits or misses,
What sages call Chance, Providence, or Fate—
(Uncertainty is one of many blisses,
A mortgage on Humanity’s estate;)—640
While their belovèd friends began to arm,
To burn a town which never did them harm.
LXXVII
Suwarrow—who but saw things in the gross.
Being much too gross to see them in detail,
Who calculated life as so much dross,
And as the wind a widowed nation’s wail,
And cared as little for his army’s loss
(So that their efforts should at length prevail)
As wife and friends did for the boils of Job—
What was ’t to him to hear two women sob?
LXXVIII
Nothing.—The work of Glory still went on
In preparations for a cannonade
As terrible as that of Ilion,
If Homer had found mortars ready made;
But now, instead of slaying Priam’s son,
We only can but talk of escalade,
Bombs, drums, guns, bastions, batteries, bayonets, bullets—
Hard words, which stick in the soft Muses’ gullets.
LXXIX
Oh, thou eternal Homer! who couldst charm
All ears, though long; all ages, though so short,
By merely wielding with poetic arm
Arms to which men will never more resort,
Unless gunpowder should be found to harm
Much less than is the hope of every court,
Which now is leagued young Freedom to annoy;
But they will not find Liberty a Troy:—
LXXX
Oh, thou eternal Homer! I have now
To paint a siege, wherein more men were slain,
With deadlier engines and a speedier blow,
Than in thy Greek gazette of that campaign;
And yet, like all men else, I must allow,
To vie with thee would be about as vain
As for a brook to cope with Ocean’s flood—
But still we moderns equal you in blood:641
LXXXI
If not in poetry, at least in fact;
And fact is Truth, the grand desideratum!
Of which, howe’er the Muse describes each act,
There should be ne’ertheless a slight substratum.
But now the town is going to be attacked;
Great deeds are doing—how shall I relate ’em?
Souls of immortal Generals! Phoebus watches
To colour up his rays from your despatches.642
LXXXII
Oh, ye great bulletins of Bonaparte!
Oh, ye less grand long lists of killed and wounded!
Shade of Leonidas, who fought so hearty,
When my poor Greece was once, as now, surrounded!
Oh, Caesar’s Commentaries! now impart, ye
Shadows of Glory! (lest I be confounded),
A portion of your fading twilight hues—
So beautiful, so fleeting—to the Muse.
LXXXIII
When I call “fading” martial immortality,
I mean, that every age and every year,
And almost every day, in sad reality,
Some sucking hero is compelled to rear,
Who, when we come to sum up the totality
Of deeds to human happiness most dear,
Turns out to be a butcher in great business,
Afflicting young folks with a sort of dizziness.
LXXXIV
Medals, rank, ribbons, lace, embroidery, scarlet,
Are things immortal to immortal man,
As purple to the Babylonian harlot:643
An uniform to boys is like
