No More Learning

"
The horsetails[376] are plucked from the ground, and the sword
From its sheath; and they form, and but wait for the word.
Tartar, and Spahi, and Turcoman, 690
Strike your tents, and throng to the van;
Mount ye, spur ye, skirr the plain,[377]
That the fugitive may flee in vain,
When he breaks from the town; and none escape,
Aged or young, in the Christian shape;
While your fellows on foot, in a fiery mass,
Bloodstain the breach through which they pass. [378]
The steeds are all bridled, and snort to the rein;
Curved is each neck, and flowing each mane;
White is the foam of their champ on the bit; 700
The spears are uplifted; the matches are lit;
The cannon are pointed, and ready to roar,
And crush the wall they have crumbled before:[379]
Forms in his phalanx each Janizar;
Alp at their head; his right arm is bare,
So is the blade of his scimitar;
The Khan and the Pachas are all at their post;
The Vizier himself at the head of the host.
When the culverin's signal is fired, then on;
Leave not in Corinth a living one-- 710
A priest at her altars, a chief in her halls,
A hearth in her mansions, a stone on her walls.
God and the prophet--Alla Hu! [380]
Up to the skies with that wild halloo!
"There the breach lies for passage, the ladder to scale;
And your hands on your sabres, and how should ye fail?
He who first downs with the red cross may crave[381]
His heart's dearest wish; let him ask it, and have! "
Thus uttered Coumourgi, the dauntless Vizier;[382]
The reply was the brandish of sabre and spear, 720
And the shout of fierce thousands in joyous ire:--
Silence--hark to the signal--fire!

XXIII.

As the wolves, that headlong go
On the stately buffalo,
Though with fiery eyes, and angry roar,
And hoofs that stamp, and horns that gore,
He tramples on earth, or tosses on high
The foremost, who rush on his strength but to die
Thus against the wall they went,
Thus the first were backward bent;[383] 730
Many a bosom, sheathed in brass,
Strewed the earth like broken glass,[qd]
Shivered by the shot, that tore
The ground whereon they moved no more:
Even as they fell, in files they lay,
Like the mower's grass at the close of day,[qe]
When his work is done on the levelled plain;
Such was the fall of the foremost slain. [384]

XXIV.

As the spring-tides, with heavy plash,
From the cliffs invading dash 740
Huge fragments, sapped by the ceaseless flow,
Till white and thundering down they go,
Like the avalanche's snow
On the Alpine vales below;
Thus at length, outbreathed and worn,
Corinth's sons were downward borne
By the long and oft renewed
Charge of the Moslem multitude.
In firmness they stood, and in masses they fell,
Heaped by the host of the Infidel, 750
Hand to hand, and foot to foot:
Nothing there, save Death, was mute;[385]
Stroke, and thrust, and flash, and cry
For quarter, or for victory,
Mingle there with the volleying thunder,
Which makes the distant cities wonder
How the sounding battle goes,
If with them, or for their foes;
If they must mourn, or may rejoice
In that annihilating voice, 760
Which pierces the deep hills through and through
With an echo dread and new:
You might have heard it, on that day,
O'er Salamis and Megara;
(We have heard the hearers say,)[qf]
Even unto Piraeus' bay.

XXV.
From the point of encountering blades to the hilt,
Sabres and swords with blood were gilt;[386]
But the rampart is won, and the spoil begun,
And all but the after carnage done. 770
Shriller shrieks now mingling come
From within the plundered dome:
Hark to the haste of flying feet,
That splash in the blood of the slippery street;
But here and there, where 'vantage ground
Against the foe may still be found,
Desperate groups, of twelve or ten,
Make a pause, and turn again--
With banded backs against the wall,
Fiercely stand, or fighting fall. 780
There stood an old man[387]--his hairs were white,
But his veteran arm was full of might:
So gallantly bore he the brunt of the fray,
The dead before him, on that day,
In a semicircle lay;
Still he combated unwounded,
Though retreating, unsurrounded.
Many a scar of former fight
Lurked[388] beneath his corslet bright;
But of every wound his body bore, 790
Each and all had been ta'en before:
Though aged, he was so iron of limb,
Few of our youth could cope with him,
And the foes, whom he singly kept at bay,
Outnumbered his thin hairs[389] of silver grey.
From right to left his sabre swept:
Many an Othman mother wept
Sons that were unborn, when dipped[390]
His weapon first in Moslem gore,
Ere his years could count a score. 800
Of all he might have been the sire[391]
Who fell that day beneath his ire:
For, sonless left long years ago,
His wrath made many a childless foe;
And since the day, when in the strait[392]
His only boy had met his fate,
His parent's iron hand did doom
More than a human hecatomb. [393]
If shades by carnage be appeased,
Patroclus' spirit less was pleased 810
Than his, Minotti's son, who died
Where Asia's bounds and ours divide.
Buried he lay, where thousands before
For thousands of years were inhumed on the shore;
What of them is left, to tell
Where they lie, and how they fell?
Not a stone on their turf, nor a bone in their graves;
But they live in the verse that immortally saves. [394]

XXVI.

Hark to the Allah shout! [395] a band
Of the Mussulman bravest and best is at hand; 820
Their leader's nervous arm is bare,
Swifter to smite, and never to spare--
Unclothed to the shoulder it waves them on;
Thus in the fight is he ever known:
Others a gaudier garb may show,
To tempt the spoil of the greedy foe;
Many a hand's on a richer hilt,
But none on a steel more ruddily gilt;
Many a loftier turban may wear,--
Alp is but known by the white arm bare; 830
Look through the thick of the fight,'tis there!
There is not a standard on that shore
So well advanced the ranks before;
There is not a banner in Moslem war
Will lure the Delhis half so far;
It glances like a falling star!
Where'er that mighty arm is seen,
The bravest be, or late have been;[396]
There the craven cries for quarter
Vainly to the vengeful Tartar; 840
Or the hero, silent lying,
Scorns to yield a groan in dying;
Mustering his last feeble blow
'Gainst the nearest levelled foe,
Though faint beneath the mutual wound,
Grappling on the gory ground.

XXVII.

Still the old man stood erect.