from Canto VIII

11

Also the General Markow, Brigadier,
     Insisting on removal of the Prince
Amidst some groaning thousands dying near,—
     All common fellows, who might writhe, and wince,
And shriek for water into a deaf ear,—
     The General Markow, who could thus evince
His sympathy for rank, by the same token,
To teach him greater, had his own leg broken.

12

Three hundred cannon threw up their emetic,
    And thirty thousand musquets flung their pills
Like hail, to make a bloody diuretic.
     Mortality! thou hast thy monthly bills;
Thy Plagues, thy Famines, thy Physicians, yet tick,
     Like the death-watch, within our ears the ills
Past, present, and to come;—but all may yield
To the true portrait of one battle-field.

13

There the still varying pangs, which multiply
     Until their very number makes men hard
By the infinities of agony,
     Which meet the gaze, whate’er it may regard—
The groan, the roll in dust, the all-white eye
     Turned back within its socket,—these reward
Your rank and file by thousands, while the rest
May win perhaps a ribbon at the breast!

14

Yet I love Glory;—glory’s a great thing;—
     Think what it is to be in your old age
Maintained at the expense of your good king:
     A moderate pension shakes full many a sage,
And heroes are but made for bards to sing,
     Which is still better; thus in verse to wage
Your wars eternally, besides enjoying
Half-pay for life, make mankind worth destroying.

15

The troops, already disembarked, pushed on
     To take a battery on the right; the others,
Who landed lower down, their landing done,
     Had set to work as briskly as their brothers:
Being grenadiers they mounted one by one,
     Cheerful as children climb the breasts of mothers,
O’er the entrenchment and the palisade,
Quite orderly, as if upon parade.

16

And this was admirable; for so hot
     The fire was, that were red Vesuvius loaded,
Besides its lava, with all sorts of shot
    And shells or hells, it could not more have goaded.
Of officers a third fell on the spot,
    A thing which victory by no means boded
To gentlemen engaged in the assault:
Hounds, when the huntsman tumbles, are at fault.

17

But here I leave the general concern,
     To track our hero on his path of fame:
He must his laurels separately earn;
     For fifty thousand heroes, name by name,
Though all deserving equally to turn
    A couplet, or an elegy to claim,
Would form a lengthy lexicon of glory,
And what is worse still, a much longer story:

18

And therefore we must give the greater number
     To the Gazette—which doubtless fairly dealt
By the deceased, who lie in famous slumber
    In ditches, fields, or wheresoe’er they felt
Their clay for the last time their souls encumber;—
    Thrice happy he whose name has been well spelt
In the despatch: I knew a man whose loss
Was printed Grove, although his name was Grose.

19

Juan and Johnson joined a certain corps,
     And fought away with might and main, not knowing
The way which they had never trod before,
     And still less guessing where they might be going;
But on they marched, dead bodies trampling o’er,
     Firing, and thrusting, slashing, sweating, glowing,
But fighting thoughtlessly enough to win,
To their two selves, one whole bright bulletin.

20

Thus on they wallowed in the bloody mire
     Of dead and dying thousands,—sometimes gaining
A yard or two of ground, which brought them nigher
     To some odd angle for which all were straining;
At other times, repulsed by the close fire,
     Which really poured as if all Hell were raining,
Instead of Heaven, they stumbled backwards o’er
A wounded comrade, sprawling in his gore.