Chapter XXII

Needs it to tell how fierce the flame
Burn’d of that doubtful strife,
Whose precious prize was life, and fame
More precious still than life!--
By France what English hearts were gor’d,
What crests were cleft by Britain’s sword,
When horse and foot infuriate met,
And sabre clash’d with bayonet,
And how they fought and how they fell,
And man and steed, ’midst shout and yell,
The field of carnage strew’d:
It were a tedious tale to tell,
A tedious tale of blood.
But when the fierce and cloudless sun
Blazed from his noontide height,
And ere the field was lost or won,
Worn and unable quite
The hostile stroke to make or shun,
Faint, breathless, all with toil foredone,
They paus’d amid the fight!
Oft, when the midnight tempests sweep
With fiercest fury o’er the deep,
Short, sullen pauses intervene,
And, ev’ry fitful gust between,
The stormy roar is still’d:
Thus was the rage of battle staid,
And clash of bayonet and blade
Subsided o’er the field:
Hush’d was the shout, the tumult laid,
And each receding line obey’d
The truce which weary nature made,
And mutual honour seal’d.

XXIII.

There is a brook, that from its source
High in the rocky hill,
Pours o’er the plain its limpid course,
To pay to Teio’s monarch force
Its tributary rill;
Which, in the peaceful summer-tide,
The swarthy shepherd sits beside,
And loitering, as it rolls along
In cadence pours his rustic song--
Carol of love or pious chaunt,
Or tale of knight and giant gaunt,
And lady captive held;
Or strains, not fabled, of the war,
Where the great champion of Bivar
The Moorish pagan quell’d.
But now, no shepherd loiters there--
He flies, with all his fleecy care,
To mountains high and far,
And starts, and breathless stops to hear
Borne on the breeze, and to his fear
Seeming, at every gust, more near,
The distant roar of war.