Don Juan
‘So now, my lads, for glory!’—Here he turn’d
And drill’d away in the most classic Russian,
Until each high, heroic bosom burn’d
For cash and conquest, as if from a cushion
A preacher had held forth (who nobly spurn’d
All earthly goods save tithes) and bade them push on
To slay the Pagans who resisted, battering
The armies of the Christian Empress Catherine.
Johnson, who knew by this long colloquy
Himself a favourite, ventured to address
Suwarrow, though engaged with accents high
In his resumed amusement. ‘I confess
My debt in being thus allow’d to die
Among the foremost; but if you’d express
Explicitly our several posts, my friend
And self would know what duty to attend.’
‘Right! I was busy, and forgot. Why, you
Will join your former regiment, which should be
Now under arms. Ho! Katskoff, take him to
(Here he call’d up a Polish orderly)
His post, I mean the regiment Nikolaiew:
The stranger stripling may remain with me;
He ’s a fine boy. The women may be sent
To the other baggage, or to the sick tent.’
But here a sort of scene began to ensue:
The ladies,—who by no means had been bred
To be disposed of in a way so new,
Although their haram education led
Doubtless to that of doctrines the most true,
Passive obedience,—now raised up the head,
With flashing eyes and starting tears, and flung
Their arms, as hens their wings about their young,
O’er the promoted couple of brave men
Who were thus honour’d by the greatest chief
That ever peopled hell with heroes slain,
Or plunged a province or a realm in grief.
O, foolish mortals! Always taught in vain!
O, glorious laurel! since for one sole leaf
Of thine imaginary deathless tree,
Of blood and tears must flow the unebbing sea.
Suwarrow, who had small regard for tears,
And not much sympathy for blood, survey’d
The women with their hair about their ears
And natural agonies, with a slight shade
Of feeling: for however habit sears
Men’s hearts against whole millions, when their trade
Is butchery, sometimes a single sorrow
Will touch even heroes—and such was Suwarrow.
He said,—and in the kindest Calmuck tone,—
‘Why, Johnson, what the devil do you mean
By bringing women here? They shall be shown
All the attention possible, and seen
In safety to the waggons, where alone
In fact they can be safe. You should have been
Aware this kind of baggage never thrives:
Save wed a year, I hate recruits with wives.’
‘May it please your excellency,’ thus replied
Our British friend, ‘these are the wives of others,
And not our own. I am too qualified
By service with my military brothers
To break the rules by bringing one’s own bride
Into a camp: I know that nought so bothers
The hearts of the heroic on a charge,
As leaving a small family at large.
‘But these are but two Turkish ladies, who
With their attendant aided our escape,
And afterwards accompanied us through
A thousand perils in this dubious shape.
To me this kind of life is not so new;
To them, poor things, it is an awkward scrape.
I therefore, if you wish me to fight freely,
Request that they may both be used genteelly.’
Meantime these two poor girls, with swimming eyes,
Look’d on as if in doubt if they could trust
Their own protectors; nor was their surprise
Less than their grief (and truly not less just)
To see an old man, rather wild than wise
In aspect, plainly clad, besmear’d with dust,
Stript to his waistcoat, and that not too clean,
More fear’d than all the sultans ever seen.
For every thing seem’d resting on his nod,
As they could read in all eyes. Now to them,
Who were accustom’d, as a sort of god,
To see the sultan, rich in many a gem,
Like an imperial peacock stalk abroad
(That royal bird, whose tail ’s a diadem),
With all the pomp of power, it was a doubt
How power could condescend to do without.
John Johnson, seeing their extreme dismay,
Though little versed in feelings oriental,
Suggested some slight comfort in his way:
Don Juan, who was much more sentimental,
Swore they should see him by the dawn of day,
Or that the Russian army should repent all:
And, strange to say, they found some consolation
In this—for females like exaggeration.
And then with tears, and sighs, and some slight kisses,
They parted for the present—these to await,
According to the artillery’s hits or misses,
What sages call Chance, Providence, or Fate
(Uncertainty is one of many blisses,
A mortgage on Humanity’s estate)—
While their beloved friends began to arm,
To burn a town which never did them harm.
Suwarrow,—who but saw things in the gross,
Being much too gross to see them in detail,
Who calculated life as so much dross,
And as the wind a widow’d nation’s wail,
And cared as little for his army’s loss
(So that their efforts should at length prevail)
As wife and friends did for the boils of Job,—
What was ’t to him to hear two women sob?
Nothing.—The work of glory still went on
In preparations for a cannonade
As terrible as that of Ilion,
If Homer had found mortars ready made;
But now, instead of slaying Priam’s son,
We only can but talk of escalade,
Bombs, drums, guns, bastions, batteries, bayonets, bullets,—
Hard words, which stick in the soft Muses’ gullets.
O, thou eternal Homer! who couldst charm
All ears, though long; all ages, though so short,
By merely wielding with poetic arm
Arms to which men will never more resort,
Unless gunpowder should be found to harm
Much less than is the hope of every court,
Which now is leagued young Freedom to annoy;
But they will not find Liberty a Troy:—
O, thou eternal Homer! I have now
To paint a siege, wherein more men were slain,
With deadlier engines and a speedier blow,
Than in thy Greek gazette of that campaign;
And yet, like all men else, I must allow,
To vie with thee would be about as vain
As for a brook to cope with ocean’s flood;
But still we moderns equal you in blood;
If not in poetry, at least in fact;
And fact is truth, the grand desideratum!
Of which, howe’er the Muse describes each act,
There should be ne’ertheless a slight substratum.
But now the town is going to be attack’d;
Great deeds are doing—how shall I relate ’em?
Souls of immortal generals! Phoebus watches
To colour up his rays from your despatches.
O, ye great bulletins of Bonaparte!
O, ye less grand long lists of kill’d and wounded!
Shade of Leonidas, who fought so hearty,
When my poor Greece was once, as now, surrounded!
O, Caesar’s Commentaries! now impart, ye
Shadows of glory! (lest I be confounded)
A portion of your fading twilight hues,
So beautiful, so fleeting, to the Muse.
When I call ‘fading’ martial immortality,
I mean, that every age and every year,
And almost every day, in sad reality,
Some sucking hero is compell’d to rear,
Who, when we come to sum up the totality
Of deeds to human happiness most dear,
Turns out to be a butcher in great business,
Afflicting young folks with a sort of dizziness.
Medals, rank, ribands, lace, embroidery, scarlet,
Are things immortal to immortal man,
As purple to the Babylonian harlot:
An uniform to boys is like a fan
To women; there is scarce a crimson varlet
But deems himself the first in Glory’s van.
But Glory’s glory; and if you would find
What that is—ask the pig who sees the wind!
At least he feels it, and some say he sees,
Because he runs before it like a pig;
Or, if that simple sentence should displease,
Say, that he scuds before it like a brig,
A schooner, or—but it is time to ease
This Canto, ere my Muse perceives fatigue.
The next shall ring a peal to shake all people,
Like a bob-major from a village steeple.
Hark! through the silence of the cold, dull night,
The hum of armies gathering rank on rank!
Lo! dusky masses steal in dubious sight
Along the leaguer’d wall and bristling bank
Of the arm’d river, while with straggling light
The stars peep through the vapours dim and dank,
Which curl in curious wreaths:—how soon the smoke
Of Hell shall pall them in a deeper cloak!
Here pause we for the present—as even then
That awful pause, dividing life from death,
Struck for an instant on the hearts of men,
Thousands of whom were drawing their last breath!
A moment—and all will be life again!
The march! the charge! the shouts of either faith!
Hurra! and Allah! and—one moment more,
The death-cry drowning in the battle’s roar.
CANTO THE EIGHTH.
O 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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 ’twere beneath the mighty noises;
While the whole rampart blazed like Etna, when
The restless Titan hiccups in his den.
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!’
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,