Inebriate with rage! - Loud and more loud
The discord grows; till pale Death shuts the scene,
And o'er the conqueror and the conquered draws
His coil and bloody shroud!
The sulphurous smoke
Before the icy wind slow rolls away,
And the bright beams of frosty morning dance
Along the spangling snow. There tracks of blood,
Even to the forest's depth, and scattered arms,
And lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments
Death's self could change not, mark the dreadful path
Of the out-sallying victors: far behind
Black ashes note where their proud city stood.
Within yon forest is a gloomy glen ;
Each tree which guards its darkness from the day
Waves o'er a warrior's tomb!
▲'IERICA TC GREAT BRITAIN. — Washington Allston. Born, 1779; died, 1843
ALL hail thou noble land,
Our fathers' native soil!
O, stretch thy mighty hand,
Gigantic grown by toil,
O'er the vast Atlantic wave to our shore
For thou, with magic might,
Canst reach to where the light
Of Phoebus travels bright,
The world o'er!
The Genius of our clime,
From his pine-embattled steep,
Shall hail the great sublime;
While the Tritons of the deep
With their conchs the kindred league shall proclaim.
Then let the world combine!
O'er the main our naval line,
Like the milky way, shall shine
Bright in fame!
Though ages long have passed
Since our fathers left their home,
Their pilot in the blast,
O'er untravelled seas to roam,
Yet lives the blood of England in our veins,
And shall we not proclaim
That blood of honest fame,
Which no tyranny can tame
By its chains?
While the language, free and bold,
Which the bard of Avon sung,
In which our Milton told
How the vault of Heaven rung,
When Satan, blasted, fell with all his host;
While this, with reverence meet,
Ten thousand echoes greet,
From rock to rock repeat
Round our coast;
While the manners, while the arts,
That mould a Nation's soul,
Still cling around our hearts,
Between let ocean roll,
Our joint communion breaking with the sun :
Yet, still, from either beach,
The voice of blood shall reach,
More audible than speech,
"We are One!"
30. OLD IRONSIDES.-Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Written when it was proposed to break up the frigate Constitution, or to convert her into a receiving ship, as unfit for service.
Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see that banner in the sky;
Beneath it rang the battle-shout, and burst the cannon's roar ;
The meteor of the ocean air shall sweep the clouds no more!
Her deck, once red with heroes' blood, where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood, and waves were white
No more shall feel the victor's tread, or know the conquered knee;
The harpies of the shore shall pluck the eagle of the sea
O, better that her shattered hulk should sink beneath the wave!
Her thunders shook the mighty deep, and there should be her grave!
Nail to the mast her holy flag, set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
the lightning and the gale!
81. THE BALL AT BRUSSELS, THE NIGHT BEFORE THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO, JUNE 17, 1815.-Lord Byron.
THERE was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium's capital had gathered then
Her Beauty and her Chivalry, and bright
The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men:
A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
Music arose, with its voluptuous swell,
Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,
And all went merry as a marriage-bell.
But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knel
No; 't was but the wind,
Or the car rattling o'er the stony street.
On with the dance! let joy be unconfined,
No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet!
But hark! that heavy sound breaks in once more,
As if the clouds its echo would repeat;
And nearer, clearer, deadlier, than before!
Arm! arm! it is - it is the cannon's opening roar!
Within a windowed niche of that high hall
Sat Brunswick's fated chieftain. He did hear
That sound the first amidst the festival,
And caught its tone with Death's prophetic ear;
And when they smiled because he deemed it near,
His heart more truly knew that peal too well,
Which stretched his father on a bloody bier,
And roused the vengeance blood alone could queil.
He rushed into the field, and, foremost fighting, fell.
Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro,
And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress,
And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago
Blushed at the praise of their own loveliness;
And there were sudden partings, such as press
The life from out' young hearts, and choking sighs
Which ne'er might be repeated. Who could
If ever more should meet those mutual eyes,
Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise
And there was mounting in hot haste: the steed,
The mustering squadron, and the clattering car,
Went pouring forward with impetuous speed,
And swiftly forming in the ranks of war;
And the deep thunder, peal on peal, far;
And near, the beat of the alarming drum
Roused up the soldier ere the morning star;
While thronged the citizens, with terror dumb,
Or whispering, with white lips- "The foe' They come
Last noon beheld them full of lusty life;
Last eve, in Beauty's circle, proudly gay;
The midnight brought the signal-sound of strife
The morn, the marshalling in arms; the day,
Battle's magnificently stern array!
The thunder-clouds close o'er it, which when rent The earth is covered thick with other clay, Which her own clay shall cover— heaped and pent, Rider and horse, friend, - foe, -in one red burial blent!
32. THE DYING GLADIATOR.-Lord Byron.
I SEE before me the Gladiator lie:
He leans upon his hand,
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
And his drooped head sinks gradually low,
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,
Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now
The arena swims around him.
he is gone,
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won
He heard it, but he heeded not: his eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far away;
He recked not of the life he lost nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother, he, their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday,
All this rushed with his blood. - Shall he expire,
And unavenged?— Arise, ye Goths, and glut your ire
33. DEGENERACY OF GREECE. - Lord Byron.
THE Isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their sun, is set.
The mountains look on Marathon,
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And, musing there an hour alone,
I dreamed that Greece might still be free
For, standing on the Persian's grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.
A King sat on the rocky brow
Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis,
And ships, by thousands, lay below,
And men and Nations—all were his!
He counted them at break of day, -
And when the sun set. where were they?
And where are they? and where art thou,
My country? On thy voiceless shore
The heroic lay is tuneless now-
The heroic bosom beats no more!
And must thy lyre, so long divine,
Degenerate into hands like mine?
You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet;
Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?
Of two such lessons, why forget
The nobler and the manlier one?
You have the letters Cadmus gave—
Think ye he meant them for a slave?
'Tis something, in the dearth of fame,
Though linked among a fettered race,
To feel, at least, a patriot's shame,
Even as I sing, suffuse my face;
For what is left the poet here?
For Greeks, a blush, for Greece, a tear!
Must we but weep o'er days more blest?
Must we but blush? - Our fathers bled.
Earth! render back from out thy breast
A remnant of our Spartan dead!
Of the three hundred grant but three,
To make a new Thermopyla!
What! silent still? and silent all?
Ah! no: - the voices of the dead
Sound like a distant torrent's fall,
And answer, "Let one living head,
But one arise, -we come, we come!"
'Tis but the living who are dumb.
34. THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB.-Lord Byron.
THE Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host, with their banners, at sunset were seen;
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host, on the morrow, lay withered and strewn.
For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still'
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