Selected Works of George Gordon, Lord Byron

     I
OH blood and thunder! and oh blood and wounds!
  These are but vulgar oaths, as you may deem,
Too gentle reader! and most shocking sounds:
  And so they are; yet thus is Glory's dream
Unriddled, and as my true Muse expounds
  At present such things, since they are her theme,
So be they her inspirers! Call them Mars,
Bellona, what you will--they mean but wars.

     II
All was prepared--the fire, the sword, the men
  To wield them in their terrible array.
The army, like a lion from his den,
  March'd forth with nerve and sinews bent to slay,--
A human Hydra, issuing from its fen
  To breathe destruction on its winding way,
Whose heads were heroes, which cut off in vain
Immediately in others grew again.

     III
History can only take things in the gross;
  But could we know them in detail, perchance
In balancing the profit and the loss,
  War's merit it by no means might enhance,
To waste so much gold for a little dross,
  As hath been done, mere conquest to advance.
The drying up a single tear has more
Of honest fame, than shedding seas of gore.

     IV
And why?--because it brings self-approbation;
  Whereas the other, after all its glare,
Shouts, bridges, arches, pensions from a nation,
  Which (it may be) has not much left to spare,
A higher title, or a loftier station,
  Though they may make Corruption gape or stare,
Yet, in the end, except in Freedom's battles,
Are nothing but a child of Murder's rattles.

     V
And such they are--and such they will be found:
  Not so Leonidas and Washington,
Whose every battle-field is holy ground,
  Which breathes of nations saved, not worlds undone.
How sweetly on the ear such echoes sound!
  While the mere victor's may appal or stun
The servile and the vain, such names will be
A watchword till the future shall be free.

     VI
The night was dark, and the thick mist allow'd
  Nought to be seen save the artillery's flame,
Which arch'd the horizon like a fiery cloud,
  And in the Danube's waters shone the same--
A mirror'd hell! the volleying roar, and loud
  Long booming of each peal on peal, o'ercame
The ear far more than thunder; for Heaven's flashes
Spare, or smite rarely--man's make millions ashes!

     VII
The column order'd on the assault scarce pass'd
  Beyond the Russian batteries a few toises,
When up the bristling Moslem rose at last,
  Answering the Christian thunders with like voices:
Then one vast fire, air, earth, and stream embraced,
  Which rock'd as 't were beneath the mighty noises;
While the whole rampart blazed like Etna, when
The restless Titan hiccups in his den.

     VIII
And one enormous shout of 'Allah!' rose
  In the same moment, loud as even the roar
Of war's most mortal engines, to their foes
  Hurling defiance: city, stream, and shore
Resounded 'Allah!' and the clouds which close
  With thick'ning canopy the conflict o'er,
Vibrate to the Eternal name. Hark! through
All sounds it pierceth 'Allah! Allah! Hu!'

     IX
The columns were in movement one and all,
  But of the portion which attack'd by water,
Thicker than leaves the lives began to fall,
  Though led by Arseniew, that great son of slaughter,
As brave as ever faced both bomb and ball.
  'Carnage' (so Wordsworth tells you) 'is God's daughter:'
If he speak truth, she is Christ's sister, and
Just now behaved as in the Holy Land.

     X
The Prince de Ligne was wounded in the knee;
  Count Chapeau-Bras, too, had a ball between
His cap and head, which proves the head to be
  Aristocratic as was ever seen,
Because it then received no injury
  More than the cap; in fact, the ball could mean
No harm unto a right legitimate head:
'Ashes to ashes'--why not lead to lead?

     XI
Also the General Markow, Brigadier,
  Insisting on removal of the prince
Amidst some groaning thousands dying near,--
  All common fellows, who might writhe and wince,
And shriek for water into a deaf ear,--
  The General Markow, who could thus evince
His sympathy for rank, by the same token,
To teach him greater, had his own leg broken.

     XII
Three hundred cannon threw up their emetic,
  And thirty thousand muskets flung their pills
Like hail, to make a bloody diuretic.
  Mortality! thou hast thy monthly bills;
Thy plagues, thy famines, thy physicians, yet tick,
  Like the death-watch, within our ears the ills
Past, present, and to come;--but all may yield
To the true portrait of one battle-field.

     XIII
There the still varying pangs, which multiply
  Until their very number makes men hard
By the infinities of agony,
  Which meet the gaze whate'er it may regard--
The groan, the roll in dust, the all-white eye
  Turn'd back within its socket,--these reward
Your rank and file by thousands, while the rest
May win perhaps a riband at the breast!

     XIV
Yet I love glory;--glory 's a great thing:--
  Think what it is to be in your old age
Maintain'd at the expense of your good king:
  A moderate pension shakes full many a sage,
And heroes are but made for bards to sing,
  Which is still better; thus in verse to wage
Your wars eternally, besides enjoying
Half-pay for life, make mankind worth destroying.

     XV
The troops, already disembark'd, push'd on
  To take a battery on the right; the others,
Who landed lower down, their landing done,
  Had set to work as briskly as their brothers:
Being grenadiers, they mounted one by one,
  Cheerful as children climb the breasts of mothers,
O'er the entrenchment and the palisade,
Quite orderly, as if upon parade.

     XVI
And this was admirable; for so hot
  The fire was, that were red Vesuvius loaded,
Besides its lava, with all sorts of shot
  And shells or hells, it could not more have goaded.
Of officers a third fell on the spot,
  A thing which victory by no means boded
To gentlemen engaged in the assault:
Hounds, when the huntsman tumbles, are at fault.

     XVII
But here I leave the general concern,
  To track our hero on his path of fame:
He must his laurels separately earn;
  For fifty thousand heroes, name by name,
Though all deserving equally to turn
  A couplet, or an elegy to claim,
Would form a lengthy lexicon of glory,
And what is worse still, a much longer story:

     XVIII
And therefore we must give the greater number
  To the Gazette--which doubtless fairly dealt
By the deceased, who lie in famous slumber
  In ditches, fields, or wheresoe'er they felt
Their clay for the last time their souls encumber;--
  Thrice happy he whose name has been well spelt
In the despatch: I knew a man whose loss
Was printed Grove, although his name was Grose.

     XIX
Juan and Johnson join'd a certain corps,
  And fought away with might and main, not knowing
The way which they had never trod before,
  And still less guessing where they might be going;
But on they march'd, dead bodies trampling o'er,
  Firing, and thrusting, slashing, sweating, glowing,
But fighting thoughtlessly enough to win,
To their two selves, one whole bright bulletin.

     XX
Thus on they wallow'd in the bloody mire
  Of dead and dying thousands,--sometimes gaining
A yard or two of ground, which brought them nigher
  To some odd angle for which all were straining;
At other times, repulsed by the close fire,
  Which really pour'd as if all hell were raining
Instead of heaven, they stumbled backwards o'er
A wounded comrade, sprawling in his gore.

     XXI
Though 't was Don Juan's first of fields, and though
  The nightly muster and the silent march
In the chill dark, when courage does not glow
  So much as under a triumphal arch,
Perhaps might make him shiver, yawn, or throw
  A glance on the dull clouds (as thick as starch,
Which stiffen'd heaven) as if he wish'd for day;--
Yet for all this he did not run away.

     XXII
Indeed he could not. But what if he had?
  There have been and are heroes who begun
With something not much better, or as bad:
  Frederic the Great from Molwitz deign'd to run,
For the first and last time; for, like a pad,
  Or hawk, or bride, most mortals after one
Warm bout are broken into their new tricks,
And fight like fiends for pay or politics.

     XXIII
He was what Erin calls, in her sublime
  Old Erse or Irish, or it may be Punic
(The antiquarians who can settle time,
  Which settles all things, Roman, Greek, or Runic,
Swear that Pat's language sprung from the same clime
  With Hannibal, and wears the Tyrian tunic
Of Dido's alphabet; and this is rational
As any other notion, and not national);--

     XXIV
But Juan was quite 'a broth of a boy,'
  A thing of impulse and a child of song;
Now swimming in the sentiment of joy,
  Or the sensation (if that phrase seem wrong),
And afterward, if he must needs destroy,
  In such good company as always throng
To battles, sieges, and that kind of pleasure,
No less delighted to employ his leisure;

     XXV
But always without malice: if he warr'd
  Or loved, it was with what we call 'the best
Intentions,' which form all mankind's trump card,
  To be produced when brought up to the test.
The statesman, hero, harlot, lawyer--ward
  Off each attack, when people are in quest
Of their designs, by saying they meant well;
'T is pity 'that such meaning should pave hell.'

     XXVI
I almost lately have begun to doubt
  Whether hell's pavement--if it be so paved--
Must not have latterly been quite worn out,
  Not by the numbers good intent hath saved,
But by the mass who go below without
  Those ancient good intentions, which once shaved
And smooth'd the brimstone of that street of hell
Which bears the greatest likeness to Pall Mall.

     XXVII
Juan, by some strange chance, which oft divides
  Warrior from warrior in their grim career,
Like chastest wives from constant husbands' sides
  Just at the close of the first bridal year,
By one of those odd turns of Fortune's tides,
  Was on a sudden rather puzzled here,
When, after a good deal of heavy firing,
He found himself alone, and friends retiring.

     XXVIII
I don't know how the thing occurr'd--it might
  Be that the greater part were kill'd or wounded,
And that the rest had faced unto the right
  About; a circumstance which has confounded
Caesar himself, who, in the very sight
  Of his whole army, which so much abounded
In courage, was obliged to snatch a shield,
And rally back his Romans to the field.

     XXIX
Juan, who had no shield to snatch, and was
  No Caesar, but a fine young lad, who fought
He knew not why, arriving at this pass,
  Stopp'd for a minute, as perhaps he ought
For a much longer time; then, like an as
  (Start not, kind reader; since great Homer thought
This simile enough for Ajax, Juan
Perhaps may find it better than a new one)--

     XXX
Then, like an ass, he went upon his way,
  And, what was stranger, never look'd behind;
But seeing, flashing forward, like the day
  Over the hills, a fire enough to blind
Those who dislike to look upon a fray,
  He stumbled on, to try if he could find
A path, to add his own slight arm and forces
To corps, the greater part of which were corses.

     XXXI
Perceiving then no more the commandant
  Of his own corps, nor even the corps, which had
Quite disappear'd--the gods know howl (I can't
  Account for every thing which may look bad
In history; but we at least may grant
  It was not marvellous that a mere lad,
In search of glory, should look on before,
Nor care a pinch of snuff about his corps):--

     XXXII
Perceiving nor commander nor commanded,
  And left at large, like a young heir, to make
His way to--where he knew not--single handed;
  As travellers follow over bog and brake
An 'ignis fatuus;' or as sailors stranded
  Unto the nearest hut themselves betake;
So Juan, following honour and his nose,
Rush'd where the thickest fire announced most foes.

     XXXIII
He knew not where he was, nor greatly cared,
  For he was dizzy, busy, and his veins
Fill'd as with lightning--for his spirit shared
  The hour, as is the case with lively brains;
And where the hottest fire was seen and heard,
  And the loud cannon peal'd his hoarsest strains,
He rush'd, while earth and air were sadly shaken
By thy humane discovery, Friar Bacon!

     XXXIV
And as he rush'd along, it came to pass he
  Fell in with what was late the second column,
Under the orders of the General Lascy,
  But now reduced, as is a bulky volume
Into an elegant extract (much less massy)
  Of heroism, and took his place with solemn
Air 'midst the rest, who kept their valiant faces
And levell'd weapons still against the glacis.

     XXXV
Just at this crisis up came Johnson too,
  Who had 'retreated,' as the phrase is when
Men run away much rather than go through
  Destruction's jaws into the devil's den;
But Johnson was a clever fellow, who
  Knew when and how 'to cut and come again,'
And never ran away, except when running
Was nothing but a valorous kind of cunning.

     XXXVI
And so, when all his corps were dead or dying,
  Except Don Juan, a mere novice, whose
More virgin valour never dreamt of flying
  From ignorance of danger, which indues
Its votaries, like innocence relying
  On its own strength, with careless nerves and thews,--
Johnson retired a little, just to rally
Those who catch cold in 'shadows of Death's valley.'

     XXXVII
And there, a little shelter'd from the shot,
  Which rain'd from bastion, battery, parapet,
Rampart, wall, casement, house,--for there was not
  In this extensive city, sore beset
By Christian soldiery, a single spot
  Which did not combat like the devil, as yet,
He found a number of Chasseurs, all scatter'd
By the resistance of the chase they batter'd.

     XXXVIII
And these he call'd on; and, what 's strange, they came
  Unto his call, unlike 'the spirits from
The vasty deep,' to whom you may exclaim,
  Says Hotspur, long ere they will leave their home.
Their reasons were uncertainty, or shame
  At shrinking from a bullet or a bomb,
And that odd impulse, which in wars or creeds
Makes men, like cattle, follow him who leads.

     XXXIX
By Jove! he was a noble fellow, Johnson,
  And though his name, than Ajax or Achilles,
Sounds less harmonious, underneath the sun soon
  We shall not see his likeness: he could kill his
Man quite as quietly as blows the monsoon
  Her steady breath (which some months the same still is):
Seldom he varied feature, hue, or muscle,
And could be very busy without bustle;

     XL
And therefore, when he ran away, he did so
  Upon reflection, knowing that behind
He would find others who would fain be rid so
  Of idle apprehensions, which like wind
Trouble heroic stomachs. Though their lids so
  Oft are soon closed, all heroes are not blind,
But when they light upon immediate death,
Retire a little, merely to take breath.

     XLI
But Johnson only ran off, to return
  With many other warriors, as we said,
Unto that rather somewhat misty bourn,
  Which Hamlet tells us is a pass of dread.
To Jack howe'er this gave but slight concern:
  His soul (like galvanism upon the dead)
Acted upon the living as on wire,
And led them back into the heaviest fire.

     XLII
Egad! they found the second time what they
  The first time thought quite terrible enough
To fly from, malgre all which people say
  Of glory, and all that immortal stuff
Which fills a regiment (besides their pay,
  That daily shilling which makes warriors tough)--
They found on their return the self-same welcome,
Which made some think, and others know, a hell come.

     XLIII
They fell as thick as harvests beneath hail,
  Grass before scythes, or corn below the sickle,
Proving that trite old truth, that life 's as frail
  As any other boon for which men stickle.
The Turkish batteries thrash'd them like a flail,
  Or a good boxer, into a sad pickle
Putting the very bravest, who were knock'd
Upon the head, before their guns were cock'd.

     XLIV
The Turks, behind the traverses and flanks
  Of the next bastion, fired away like devils,
And swept, as gales sweep foam away, whole ranks:
  However, Heaven knows how, the Fate who levels
Towns, nations, worlds, in her revolving pranks,
  So order'd it, amidst these sulphury revels,
That Johnson and some few who had not scamper'd,
Reach'd the interior talus of the rampart.

     XLV
First one or two, then five, six, and a dozen,
  Came mounting quickly up, for it was now
All neck or nothing, as, like pitch or rosin,
  Flame was shower'd forth above, as well 's below,
So that you scarce could say who best had chosen,
  The gentlemen that were the first to show
Their martial faces on the parapet,
Or those who thought it brave to wait as yet.

     XLVI
But those who scaled, found out that their advance
  Was favour'd by an accident or blunder:
The Greek or Turkish Cohorn's ignorance
  Had palisado'd in a way you 'd wonder
To see in forts of Netherlands or France
  (Though these to our Gibraltar must knock under)--
Right in the middle of the parapet
Just named, these palisades were primly set:

     XLVII
So that on either side some nine or ten
  Paces were left, whereon you could contrive
To march; a great convenience to our men,
  At least to all those who were left alive,
Who thus could form a line and fight again;
  And that which farther aided them to strive
Was, that they could kick down the palisades,
Which scarcely rose much higher than grass blades.

     XLVIII
Among the first,--I will not say the first,
  For such precedence upon such occasions
Will oftentimes make deadly quarrels burst
  Out between friends as well as allied nations:
The Briton must be bold who really durst
  Put to such trial John Bull's partial patience,
As say that Wellington at Waterloo
Was beaten--though the Prussians say so too;--

     XLIX
And that if Blucher, Bulow, Gneisenau,
  And God knows who besides in 'au' and 'ow,'
Had not come up in time to cast an awe
  Into the hearts of those who fought till now
As tigers combat with an empty craw,
  The Duke of Wellington had ceased to show
His orders, also to receive his pensions,
Which are the heaviest that our history mentions.

     L
But never mind;--'God save the king!' and kings!
  For if he don't, I doubt if men will longer--
I think I hear a little bird, who sings
  The people by and by will be the stronger:
The veriest jade will wince whose harness wrings
  So much into the raw as quite to wrong her
Beyond the rules of posting,--and the mob
At last fall sick of imitating Job.

     LI
At first it grumbles, then it swears, and then,
  Like David, flings smooth pebbles 'gainst a giant;
At last it takes to weapons such as men
  Snatch when despair makes human hearts less pliant.
Then comes 'the tug of war;'--'t will come again,
  I rather doubt; and I would fain say 'fie on 't,'
If I had not perceived that revolution
Alone can save the earth from hell's pollution.

     LII
But to continue:--I say not the first,
  But of the first, our little friend Don Juan
Walk'd o'er the walls of Ismail, as if nursed
  Amidst such scenes--though this was quite a new one
To him, and I should hope to most. The thirst
  Of glory, which so pierces through and through one,
Pervaded him--although a generous creature,
As warm in heart as feminine in feature.

     LIII
And here he was--who upon woman's breast,
  Even from a child, felt like a child; howe'er
The man in all the rest might be confest,
  To him it was Elysium to be there;
And he could even withstand that awkward test
  Which Rousseau points out to the dubious fair,
'Observe your lover when he leaves your arms;'
But Juan never left them, while they had charms,

     LIV
Unless compell'd by fate, or wave, or wind,
  Or near relations, who are much the same.
But here he was!--where each tie that can bind
  Humanity must yield to steel and flame:
And he whose very body was all mind,
  Flung here by fate or circumstance, which tame
The loftiest, hurried by the time and place,
Dash'd on like a spurr'd blood-horse in a race.

     LV
So was his blood stirr'd while he found resistance,
  As is the hunter's at the five-bar gate,
Or double post and rail, where the existence
  Of Britain's youth depends upon their weight,
The lightest being the safest: at a distance
  He hated cruelty, as all men hate
Blood, until heated--and even then his own
At times would curdle o'er some heavy groan.

     LVI
The General Lascy, who had been hard press'd,
  Seeing arrive an aid so opportune
As were some hundred youngsters all abreast,
  Who came as if just dropp'd down from the moon,
To Juan, who was nearest him, address'd
  His thanks, and hopes to take the city soon,
Not reckoning him to be a 'base Bezonian'
(As Pistol calls it), but a young Livonian.

     LVII
Juan, to whom he spoke in German, knew
  As much of German as of Sanscrit, and
In answer made an inclination to
  The general who held him in command;
For seeing one with ribands, black and blue,
  Stars, medals, and a bloody sword in hand,
Addressing him in tones which seem'd to thank,
He recognised an officer of rank.

     LVIII
Short speeches pass between two men who speak
  No common language; and besides, in time
Of war and taking towns, when many a shriek
  Rings o'er the dialogue, and many a crime
Is perpetrated ere a word can break
  Upon the ear, and sounds of horror chime
In like church-bells, with sigh, howl, groan, yell, prayer,
There cannot be much conversation there.

     LIX
And therefore all we have related in
  Two long octaves, pass'd in a little minute;
But in the same small minute, every sin
  Contrived to get itself comprised within it.
The very cannon, deafen'd by the din,
  Grew dumb, for you might almost hear a linnet,
As soon as thunder, 'midst the general noise
Of human nature's agonising voice!

     LX
The town was enter'd. Oh eternity!--
  'God made the country and man made the town,'
So Cowper says--and I begin to be
  Of his opinion, when I see cast down
Rome, Babylon, Tyre, Carthage, Nineveh,
  All walls men know, and many never known;
And pondering on the present and the past,
To deem the woods shall be our home at last

    LXI
Of all men, saving Sylla the man-slayer,
  Who passes for in life and death most lucky,
Of the great names which in our faces stare,
  The General Boon, back-woodsman of Kentucky,
Was happiest amongst mortals anywhere;
  For killing nothing but a bear or buck, he
Enjoy'd the lonely, vigorous, harmless days
Of his old age in wilds of deepest maze.

     LXII
Crime came not near him--she is not the child
  Of solitude; Health shrank not from him--for
Her home is in the rarely trodden wild,
  Where if men seek her not, and death be more
Their choice than life, forgive them, as beguiled
  By habit to what their own hearts abhor--
In cities caged. The present case in point I
Cite is, that Boon lived hunting up to ninety;

     LXIII
And what 's still stranger, left behind a name
  For which men vainly decimate the throng,
Not only famous, but of that good fame,
  Without which glory 's but a tavern song--
Simple, serene, the antipodes of shame,
  Which hate nor envy e'er could tinge with wrong;
An active hermit, even in age the child
Of Nature, or the man of Ross run wild.

     LXIV
'T is true he shrank from men even of his nation,
  When they built up unto his darling trees,--
He moved some hundred miles off, for a station
  Where there were fewer houses and more ease;
The inconvenience of civilisation
  Is, that you neither can be pleased nor please;
But where he met the individual man,
He show'd himself as kind as mortal can.

     LXV
He was not all alone: around him grew
  A sylvan tribe of children of the chase,
Whose young, unwaken'd world was ever new,
  Nor sword nor sorrow yet had left a trace
On her unwrinkled brow, nor could you view
  A frown on Nature's or on human face;
The free-born forest found and kept them free,
And fresh as is a torrent or a tree.

     LXVI
And tall, and strong, and swift of foot were they,
  Beyond the dwarfing city's pale abortions,
Because their thoughts had never been the prey
  Of care or gain: the green woods were their portions;
No sinking spirits told them they grew grey,
  No fashion made them apes of her distortions;
Simple they were, not savage; and their rifles,
Though very true, were not yet used for trifles.

     LXVII
Motion was in their days, rest in their slumbers,
  And cheerfulness the handmaid of their toil;
Nor yet too many nor too few their numbers;
  Corruption could not make their hearts her soil;
The lust which stings, the splendour which encumbers,
  With the free foresters divide no spoil;
Serene, not sullen, were the solitudes
Of this unsighing people of the woods.

     LXVIII
So much for Nature:--by way of variety,
  Now back to thy great joys, Civilisation!
And the sweet consequence of large society,
  War, pestilence, the despot's desolation,
The kingly scourge, the lust of notoriety,
  The millions slain by soldiers for their ration,
The scenes like Catherine's boudoir at threescore,
With Ismail's storm to soften it the more.

     LXIX
The town was enter'd: first one column made
  Its sanguinary way good--then another;
The reeking bayonet and the flashing blade
  Clash'd 'gainst the scimitar, and babe and mother
With distant shrieks were heard Heaven to upbraid:
  Still closer sulphury clouds began to smother
The breath of morn and man, where foot by foot
The madden'd Turks their city still dispute.

     LXX
Koutousow, he who afterward beat back
  (With some assistance from the frost and snow)
Napoleon on his bold and bloody track,
  It happen'd was himself beat back just now;
He was a jolly fellow, and could crack
  His jest alike in face of friend or foe,
Though life, and death, and victory were at stake;
But here it seem'd his jokes had ceased to take:

     LXXI
For having thrown himself into a ditch,
  Follow'd in haste by various grenadiers,
Whose blood the puddle greatly did enrich,
  He climb'd to where the parapet appears;
But there his project reach'd its utmost pitch
  ('Mongst other deaths the General Ribaupierre's
Was much regretted), for the Moslem men
Threw them all down into the ditch again.

     LXXII
And had it not been for some stray troops landing
  They knew not where, being carried by the stream
To some spot, where they lost their understanding,
  And wander'd up and down as in a dream,
Until they reach'd, as daybreak was expanding,
  That which a portal to their eyes did seem,--
The great and gay Koutousow might have lain
Where three parts of his column yet remain.

     LXXIII
And scrambling round the rampart, these same troops,
  After the taking of the 'Cavalier,'
Just as Koutousow's most 'forlorn' of 'hopes'
  Took like chameleons some slight tinge of fear,
Open'd the gate call'd 'Kilia,' to the groups
  Of baffled heroes, who stood shyly near,
Sliding knee-deep in lately frozen mud,
Now thaw'd into a marsh of human blood.

     LXXIV
The Kozacks, or, if so you please, Cossacques
  (I don't much pique myself upon orthography,
So that I do not grossly err in facts,
  Statistics, tactics, politics, and geography)--
Having been used to serve on horses' backs,
  And no great dilettanti in topography
Of fortresses, but fighting where it pleases
Their chiefs to order,--were all cut to pieces.

     LXXV
Their column, though the Turkish batteries thunder'd
  Upon them, ne'ertheless had reach'd the rampart,
And naturally thought they could have plunder'd
  The city, without being farther hamper'd;
But as it happens to brave men, they blunder'd--
  The Turks at first pretended to have scamper'd,
Only to draw them 'twixt two bastion corners,
From whence they sallied on those Christian scorners.