Tartar, and Spahi, and Turcoman,

645

Strike your tents, and throng to the van;

Mount ye, spur ye, skirr the plain,

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.
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 :
The spears are uplifted; the matches are lit;
The cannon are pointed, and ready to roar,
And crush the wall they have crumbled before:
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—

A priest at her altars, a chief in her halls,

A hearth in her mansions, a stone on her walls.

650

655

660

665

God and the prophet-Alla Hu!

Up to the skies with that wild halloo !

"There the breach lies for passage, the ladder to

scale;

670

"And your hands on your sabres, and how should ye

fail?

"He who first downs with the red cross may crave "His heart's dearest wish; let him ask it, and have!" Thus uttered Coumourgi, the dauntless vizier ; The reply was the brandish of sabre and spear, And the shout of fierce thousands in joyous ire:Silence-hark to the signal-fire!

675

XXIII.

As the wolves, that headlong go

On the stately buffalo,

Though with fiery eyes, and angry roar,

680

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;

Many a bosom, sheathed in brass,

Strewed the earth like broken glass,

685

Shivered by the shot, that tore

The ground whereon they moved no more:

Even as they fell, in files they lay,

690

Like the mower's grass at the close of day,

When his work is done on the levelled plain;

Such was the fall of the foremost slain.

XXIV.

As the spring-tides, with heavy plash;

Charge of the Moslem multitude.

In firmness they stood, and in masses they fell,

Heaped, by the host of the infidel,

Hand to hand, and foot to foot:

Nothing there, save death, was mute;

Stroke, and thrust, and flash, and cry

For quarter, or for victory,

705

Mingle there with the volleying thunder,

710

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,

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,)

Even unto Piræus bay.

XXV.

From the point of encountering blades to the hilt,
Sabres and swords with blood were gilt:

But the rampart is won, and the spoil begun,

715

720

And all but the after carnage done.

725

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

730

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.

735

There stood an old man-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 beneath his corslet bright;
But of every wound his body bore,
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 of silver gray.
From right to left his sabre swept :

Many an Othman mother wept

Sons that were unborn, when dipped

740

745

750