From pine-plough'd Baltic, to that ice-bound coast, Where Desolation lives, and life is lost, Bid all thy Centaur-Sons around thee close, Suckled in storms, and cradled on the snows, Hard as that sea of stone, that belts their strand And as the grave tenacious of the spoil,--- Concentering thick for death or glory strive; 70 Then round th' Invader swarm, his death-fraught cloud, While the white desert girds him like a shrowd,-- Full on his front and rear the battle-tide With arm of lightning, hoof of thunder guide; 80 Soon shall the Gaul his transient triumph rue, Fierce burns the victim, and the altar too. Now sinks the blood-red sun, eclips'd by light, And yields his throne to far more brilliant night. Long stood each stately tower, and column high, Conquer'd at length, with hideous crash they fall, In horrid league, and chaf'd by every wind That from the hoarse Æolian cave is driven, 90 Could with such wreck astound both earth and heaven. Rage Elements! wreck, ravage all ye can, Ye are not half so fierce as man to man! Wide and more wide, self-warn'd, without command, Gaul's awe-struck files their circling wings expand; 100 Through many a stage of horrors had they past, The climax this, the direst and the last; Albeit unused o'er others griefs to moan, Soon shall they purchase feeling from their own. From flank to centre, and from rear to van, The billowing crackling conflagration ran, Wraps earth in sulphurous wave, and now the skies With tall colossal magnitude defies,-- Extends her base, while sword and spear retire, Weak as the bulrush to the lava's ire. Long had that circle, belted wide and far By burnished helm, and bristling steel of war, Presented hideous to the Gallic host One blazing sea, one adamantine coast! High o'er their head the bickering radiance towers, Or falls from clouds of smoke in scorching showers: 110 Beneath their crimson concave long they stood Like bordering pines, when lightning fires the wood, And as they hemm'd that grim horizon in, Each read in each the terrors of the scene. 120 Some fear'd--accusing conscience waked the fear,--- Deem'd that they heard that thundrous Voice proclaim, "Thou Moon to blood be turn'd, thou Earth to flame!" Red-rob'd Destruction far and wide extends Her thousand arms, and summons all her Fiends 130 groans and shrieks whom sickness, age, or wound, Or changeless fearless love in fatal durance bound. While Valour sternly sighs, while Beauty weeps, And Vengeance, soon to wake like Sampson, sleeps, Like Dagon's temple falls !--but falls to crush the Foe. Tyrant! think not SHE unaveng'd shall burn; Thou too hast much to suffer, much to learn: That thirst of power the Danube but inflamed, Triumph a little space by craft and crime, Two foes thou canst not conquer,—Truth, and Time; Resistless pair! they doom thy power to fade, Lost in the ruins that itself hath made; Or, damn'd to fame, like Babylon to scowl O'er wastes where serpents hiss, hyænas howl. 140 Forge then the links of martial law, that bind, Enslave, imbrute, and mechanise the mind; |