Selected Works of George Gordon, Lord Byron

     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)--
While their beloved 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 widow'd 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 cars, 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;

     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 attack'd;
  Great deeds are doing--how shall I relate 'em?
Souls of immortal generals! Phoebus watches
To colour up his rays from your despatches.

     LXXXII
Oh, ye great bulletins of Bonaparte!
  Oh, ye less grand long lists of kill'd 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 compell'd 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, ribands, lace, embroidery, scarlet,
  Are things immortal to immortal man,
As purple to the Babylonian harlot:
  An uniform to boys is like a fan
To women; there is scarce a crimson varlet
  But deems himself the first in Glory's van.
But Glory's glory; and if you would find
What that is--ask the pig who sees the wind!

     LXXXV
At least he feels it, and some say he sees,
  Because he runs before it like a pig;
Or, if that simple sentence should displease,
  Say, that he scuds before it like a brig,
A schooner, or--but it is time to ease
  This Canto, ere my Muse perceives fatigue.
The next shall ring a peal to shake all people,
Like a bob-major from a village steeple.

     LXXXVI
Hark! through the silence of the cold, dull night,
  The hum of armies gathering rank on rank!
Lo! dusky masses steal in dubious sight
  Along the leaguer'd wall and bristling bank
Of the arm'd river, while with straggling light
  The stars peep through the vapours dim and dank,
Which curl in curious wreaths:--how soon the smoke
Of Hell shall pall them in a deeper cloak!

     LXXXVII
Here pause we for the present--as even then
  That awful pause, dividing life from death,
Struck for an instant on the hearts of men,
  Thousands of whom were drawing their last breath!
A moment--and all will be life again!
  The march! the charge! the shouts of either faith!
Hurra! and Allah! and--one moment more,
The death-cry drowning in the battle's roar.