To courage, strength to strength, cool wisdom bring ;
Nurse every nerve, and plume thy ruffled wing;
Firm, but composed,-prepared, but tranquil prove,
As the dread eagle at the throne of Jove!
Each arm provide, and engine of the war,
Till Rout and Havoc answer-Here we are!
And Valour, steeled by virtuous energy,
To just Revenge shall utter-Come with me!
From pine-ploughed Baltic, to that ice-bound coast,
Where Desolation lives, and life is lost,
Bid all thy Centaur-Sons around thee close,
Suckled in storms, and cradled on the snows,
Hard as that sea of stone, that belts their strand
With marble wave, more solid than the land;
Men fiercer than their skies, inured to toil,
And as the grave tenacious of the spoil, -
Thronged as the locust, as the lion brave,
Fleet as the pard that hies her young to save;
Tell them their king, their father takes the field,
A host his presence and his cause a shield!
Nor strike the blow, till all thy northern hive
Concentring thick, for death or glory strive;
Then round the Invader swarm, his death-fraught cloud,
While the white desart girds him like a shroud,—
Full on his front and rear, the battle-tide
With arm of lightning, hoof of thunder guide;
Soon shall the Gaul his transient triumph rue—
Fierce burns the victim, and the altar too!
Now sinks the blood-red sun, eclipsed by light,
And yields his throne to far more brilliant night.
Roused by the flames, the blast, with rushing sound,
Both fed and fanned the ruin that it found.
Long stood each stately tower, and column high,
And saw the molten gulf beneath them lie;
Long reared their heads the aspiring flames above,
As stood the Giants when they warred with Jove,—
Conquered at length, with hideous crash they fall,
And one o'erwhelming havoc covers all.
Nor Ætna, nor Vesuvius, though combined
In horrid league, and chafed by every wind
That from the hoarse Eolian cave is driven,
Could with such wreck astound both earth and heaven.
Rage, Elements! wreck, ravage all ye can,
Ye are not half so fierce as man to man!
Wide and more wide, self-warned, without command,
Gaul's awe-struck files their circling wings expand;
Through many a stage of horrors had they past—
The climax this, the direst and the last;
Albeit unused o'er others' griefs to moan,
Soon shall they purchase feeling from their own.
From flank to centre, and from rear to van,
The billowing, crackling conflagration ran,-
Wraps earth in sulphurous wave, and now the skies
With tall colossal magnitude defies,-
Extends her base, while sword and spear retire,
Weak as the bulrush to the lava's ire.
Long had that circle, belted wide and far
By burnished helm, and bristling steel of war,
Presented hideous to the Gallic host
One blazing sea, one adamantine coast!
High o'er their head the bickering radiance towers,
Or falls from clouds of smoke in scorching showers :
Beneath their crimson concave long they stood
Like bordering pines, when lightning fires the wood,
And as they hemmed that grim horizon in,
Each read in each the terrors of the scene.
Some feared-accusing conscience waked the fear,—
The DAY of wrath and retribution near,
Deemed that they heard that thundrous VOICE proclaim, "Thou Moon to blood be turned, thou Earth to flame!"
Red-robed Destruction far and wide extends Her thousand arms, and summons all her fiends To glut their fill, a gaunt and ghastly brood! Their food is carnage, and their drink is blood;
Their music, woe: nor did that feast of hell
Fit concert want,-the conquerors' savage yell-
Their
and shrieks whom sickness, age, or wound,
Or changeless, fearless love in fatal durance bound.
While valour sternly sighs, while beauty weeps; And vengeance, soon to wake like Sampson, sleeps, Shrouded in flame, the Imperial City low
Like Dagon's temple falls-but falls to crush the foe!
Tyrant! think not SHE unavenged shall burn ;
Thou too hast much to suffer, much to learn:
That thirst of power the Danube but inflamed,
By Neva's cooler current may be tamed.
Triumph a little space by craft and crime,
Two foes thou canst not conquer-Truth, and Time.
Resistless pair! they doom thy power to fade,
Lost in the ruins that itself hath made!
Or, dainned to fame, like Babylon to scowl
O'er wastes where serpents hiss, hyænas howl.
Forge then the links of martial law, that bind,
Enslave, imbrute, and mechanise the mind;
Indite thy conscript code with iron pen,
That cancels crime, demoralizes men;
Thy false and fatal aid to virtue lend,
And start a Washington, a Nero end;
And vainly strive to strangle in his youth
Freedom, the Herculean son of Light and Truth.
Stepfather foul!-thou to his infant bed
Didst steal, and drop a changeling in his stead.
-Yes, yes,-I see thee turn thy vaunting gaze,
Where files reflect to files the o'erpowering blaze;
Rather, like Xerxes, o'er those numbers sigh,
Braver than his, but sooner doomed to die.
Here-number only courts that death it cloys!
Here-might is weakness, and herself destroys!
Lead then thy southern myriads locked in steel,
Lead on! too soon their nerveless arm shall feel
Those magazines impregnable of snow,
That kill without a wound, o'erwhelm without a foe!
I see thee, 't is the bard's prophetic eye, Blindly presumptuous Chief,-I see thee fly! While breathing skeletons, and bloodless dead, Point to the thirsting foe the track you tread. To seize was easy, and to march was plain; Hard to retreat, and harder to retain. Reft of thy trappings, pomp, and glittering gear, Dearth in thy van,-destruction in thy rear,Like foiled Darius, doomed too late to know The stern enigmas of a Scythian foe,Thy standard torn, while 'vengeful scorpions sting The Imperial bird, and cramp his flagging wing,— The days are numbered of thy motley host, Freedom's vain fear, Oppression's vainer boast.
And lo! the Beresyna opens wide
His yawning mouth, his wintry weltering tide!
Expectant of his mighty meal, he flows
In silent ambush through his trackless snows:
There shall thy way-worn ranks despairing stand,
Like trooping spectres on the Stygian strand,
And curse their fate and thee,-and conquest sown
With retribution deep, in vain repentance moan!
Thy Veteran worn by wounds, and years, and toils,
Pilgrim of honour in all suns and soils!
By thy ambition foully tempted forth
To fight the frozen rigours of the north,
Above complaint, indignant at his wrongs,
Curses the morsel that his life prolongs,
Unpierced, unconquered sinks; yet breathes a sigh,—
For he had hoped a soldier's death to die.
Was it for this that fatal hour he braved,
When o'er the Cross the conquering Crescent waved?
Was it for this he ploughed the Western main,
To weld the struggling Negro's broken chain,-
Faced his relentless hate, to frenzy fired;
Stung by past wrongs, by present hopes inspired,-
Then hurried home to lend his treacherous aid,
And stain more deeply still the warrior's blade,
When spoiled Iberia, roused to deeds sublime,
Made vengeance virtue-clemency a crime;
And 'scaped he these, to fall without a foe?
The wolf his sepulchre? his shroud the snow!
'Tis morn!- but lo, the warrior-steed in vain The trumpet summons from the bloodless plain; Ne'er was he known till now to stand aloof,
Still midst the slain was found his crimson hoof;
And struggling still to join that well-known sound,
He dies, ignobly dies, without a wound!
Oft had he hailed the battle from afar,
And pawed to meet the rushing wreck of war!
With reinless neck the danger oft had braved,
And crushed the foe-his wounded rider saved;
Oft had the rattling spear and sword assailed
His generous heart, and had as often failed:
That heart no more life's frozen current thaws,
Brave, guiltless champion, in a guilty cause!
One northen night more hideous work hath done,
Than whole campaigns beneath a southern sun.
Spoiled Child of Fortune! could the murdered Turk,
Or wronged Iberian view thy ghastly work,
They'd sheathe the 'vengeful blade, and clearly see
France needs no deadlier, direr curse than thee.
War hath fed war!-such was thy dread behest,
Now view the iron fragments of the feast.
O, if to cause and witness others' grief
Unmoved, be firmness-thou art Stoa's Chief!
Thy fell recorded boast, all Zeno said
Outdoes-"I wear my heart within my head!”-
Caught in the Northern net, what darest thou dare?
Snatch might from madness? courage from despair?
If courage lend thy breast a transient ray,
'Tis the storm's lightning-not the beam of day:
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