from Canto VIII

81

For all the answer to his proposition
     Was from a pistol shot that laid him dead;
On which the rest, without more intermission,
     Began to lay about with steel and lead—
The pious metals most in requisition
     On such occasions: not a single head
Was spared,—three thousand Moslems perished here,
And sixteen bayonets pierced the Seraskier.

82

The city’s taken—only part by part—
     And Death is drunk with gore: there’s not a street
Where fights not to the last some desperate heart
     For those for whom it soon shall cease to beat.
Here War forgot his own destructive Art
     In more destroying Nature; and the heat
Of Carnage, like the Nile’s sun-sodden Slime,
Engendered monstrous shapes of every Crime.

83

A Russian officer, in martial tread
     Over a heap of bodies, felt his heel
Seized fast, as if ‘twere by the serpent’s head
     Whose fangs Eve taught her human seed to feel:
In vain he kicked, and swore, and writhed, and bled,
     And howled for help as wolves do for a meal—
The teeth still kept their gratifying hold,
As do the subtle snakes described of old.

84

A dying Moslem, who had felt the foot
     Of a foe o’er him, snatched at it, and bit
The very tendon, which is most acute—
     (That which some ancient Muse or Modern Wit
Named after thee, Achilles) and quite through’t
     He made the teeth meet, nor relinquished it
Even with his life—for (but they lie) ‘tis said
To the live leg still clung the severed head.

85

However this may be, ‘tis pretty sure
    The Russian officer for life was lamed,
For the Turk’s teeth stuck faster than a skewer,
     And left him ‘midst the invalid and maimed:
The regimental surgeon could not cure
     His patient, and perhaps was to be blamed
More than the head of the inveterate foe,
Which was cut off, and scarce even then let go.

86

But then the fact’s a fact—and ‘tis the part
     Of a true poet to escape from fiction
Whene’er he can; for there is little art
     In leaving verse more free from the restriction
Of truth than prose, unless to suit the mart
     For what is sometimes called poetic diction,
And that outrageous appetite for lies
Which Satan angles with, for souls, like flies.

87

The City’s taken, but not renderedNo" alt="" />
     There’s not a Moslem that hath yielded sword:
The blood may gush out, as the Danube’s flow
     Rolls by the city wall; but deed nor word
Acknowledge aught of dread of death or foe:
     In vain the yell of victory is roared
By the advancing Muscovite—the groan
Of the last foe is echoed by his own.

88

The bayonet pierces and the sabre cleaves,
     And human lives are lavished every where,
As the year closing whirls the scarlet leaves
    When the stript forest bows to the bleak air,
And groans; and thus the peopled City grieves,
    Shorn of its best and loveliest, and left bare;
But still it falls with vast and awful splinters,
As Oaks blown down with all their thousand winters.

89

It is an awful topic—but ‘tis not
     My cue for any time to be terrific:
For checquered as is seen our human lot
     With good, and bad, and worse, alike prolific
Of melancholy merriment, to quote
    Too much of one sort would be soporific;—
Without, or with, offence to friends or foes,
I sketch your world exactly as it goes.

90

And one good action in the midst of crimes
     Is “quite refreshing,” in the affected phrase
Of these ambrosial, Pharisaic times,
     With all their pretty milk-and-water ways,
And may serve therefore to bedew these rhymes,
     A little scorched at present with the blaze
Of conquest and its consequences, which
Make Epic poesy so rare and rich.