Bear it, ye Muses, on your brightest wing!
Howe’er the mighty locust, Desolation,
Strip your green fields, and to your harvests cling,
Gaunt famine never shall approach the throne—
Though Ireland starve, great George weighs twenty stone.724
CXXVII
But let me put an end unto my theme:
There was an end of Ismail—hapless town!
Far flashed her burning towers o’er Danube’s stream,
And redly ran his blushing waters down.
The horrid war-whoop and the shriller scream
Rose still; but fainter were the thunders grown:
Of forty thousand who had manned the wall,
Some hundreds breathed—the rest were silent all!725
CXXVIII
In one thing ne’ertheless ’tis fit to praise
The Russian army upon this occasion,
A virtue much in fashion now-a-days,
And therefore worthy of commemoration:726
The topic’s tender, so shall be my phrase—
Perhaps the season’s chill, and their long station
In Winter’s depth, or want of rest and victual,
Had made them chaste;—they ravished very little.
CXXIX
Much did they slay, more plunder, and no less
Might here and there occur some violation
In the other line;—but not to such excess
As when the French, that dissipated nation,
Take towns by storm: no causes can I guess,
Except cold weather and commiseration;727
But all the ladies, save some twenty score,
Were almost as much virgins as before.
CXXX
Some odd mistakes, too, happened in the dark,
Which showed a want of lanterns, or of taste—
Indeed the smoke was such they scarce could mark
Their friends from foes—besides such things from haste
Occur, though rarely, when there is a spark
Of light to save the venerably chaste:
But six old damsels, each of seventy years,
Were all deflowered by different grenadiers.
CXXXI
But on the whole their continence was great;
So that some disappointment there ensued
To those who had felt the inconvenient state
Of “single blessedness,” and thought it good
(Since it was not their fault, but only fate,
To bear these crosses) for each waning prude
To make a Roman sort of Sabine wedding,
Without the expense and the suspense of bedding.
CXXXII
Some voices of the buxom middle-aged
Were also heard to wonder in the din
(Widows of forty were these birds long caged)
“Wherefore the ravishing did not begin!”
But while the thirst for gore and plunder raged,
There was small leisure for superfluous sin;
But whether they escaped or no, lies hid
In darkness—I can only hope they did.
CXXXIII
Suwarrow now was conqueror—a match
For Timour or for Zinghis in his trade.
While mosques and streets, beneath his eyes, like thatch
Blazed, and the cannon’s roar was scarce allayed,
With bloody hands he wrote his first despatch;
And here exactly follows what he said:—
“Glory to God and to the Empress!” (Powers
Eternal! such names mingled!) “Ismail’s ours.”728
CXXXIV
Methinks these are the most tremendous words,
Since “Mene, Mene, Tekel,” and “Upharsin,”
Which hands or pens have ever traced of swords.
Heaven help me! I’m but little of a parson:
What Daniel read was short-hand of the Lord’s,
Severe, sublime; the prophet wrote no farce on
The fate of nations;—but this Russ so witty
Could rhyme, like Nero, o’er a burning city.
CXXXV
He wrote this Polar melody, and set it,
Duly accompanied by shrieks and groans,
Which few will sing, I trust, but none forget it—
For I will teach, if possible, the stones
To rise against Earth’s tyrants. Never let it
Be said that we still truckle unto thrones;—
But ye—our children’s children! think how we
Showed what things were before the World was free!
CXXXVI
That hour is not for us, but ’tis for you:
And as, in the great joy of your Millennium,
You hardly will believe such things were true
As now occur, I thought that I would pen you ’em;
But may their very memory perish too!—
Yet if perchance remembered, still disdain you ’em
More than you scorn the savages of yore,
Who painted their bare limbs, but not with gore.
CXXXVII
And when you hear historians talk of thrones,
And those that sate upon them, let it be
As we now gaze upon the mammoth’s bones,
And wonder what old world such things could see,
Or hieroglyphics on Egyptian stones,
The pleasant riddles of futurity—
Guessing at what shall happily be hid,
As the real purpose of a pyramid.
CXXXVIII
Reader! I have kept my word—at least so far
As the first Canto promised. You have now
Had sketches of Love—Tempest—Travel—War—
All very accurate, you must allow,
And Epic, if plain truth should prove no bar;
For I have drawn much less with a long bow
Than my forerunners. Carelessly I sing,
But Phoebus lends me now and then a string,
CXXXIX
With which I still can harp, and carp, and fiddle.
What further hath befallen or may befall
The hero of this grand poetic riddle,
I by and by may tell you, if at all:
But now I choose to break off in the middle,
Worn out with battering Ismail’s stubborn wall,
While Juan is sent off with the despatch,
For which all Petersburgh is on the watch.
CXL
This special honour was conferred, because
He had behaved with courage and humanity—
Which last men like, when they have time to pause
From their ferocities produced by vanity.
His little captive gained him some applause
For saving her amidst the wild insanity
Of carnage—and I think he was more glad in her
Safety, than his new order of St. Vladimir.
CXLI
The Muslim orphan went with her protector,
For she was homeless, houseless, helpless; all
Her friends, like the sad family of Hector,
Had perished in the field or by the wall:
Her very place of birth was but a spectre
Of what it had been; there the Muezzin’s call
To prayer was heard no more!—and Juan wept,
And made a vow to shield her, which he kept.
Canto IX
I729
Oh, Wellington! (or “Villainton”730—for Fame731
Sounds the heroic syllables both ways;
France could not even conquer your great name,
But punned it down to this facetious phrase—
Beating or beaten she will
