from Canto VIII

101

Johnson said—”Juan, we’ve no time to lose;
     The child’s a pretty child—a very pretty—
I never saw such eyes—but hark! now choose
     Between your fame and feelings, pride and pity;—
Hark! how the roar increases!—no excuse
     Will serve when there is plunder in a city;—
I should be loth to march without you, but,
By God! we’ll be too late for the first cut.”

102

But Juan was immoveable; until
     Johnson, who really loved him in his way,
Picked out amongst his followers with some skill
     Such as he thought the least given up to prey;
And swearing if the infant came to ill
     That they should all be shot on the next day;
But, if she were delivered safe, and sound,
They should at least have fifty roubles round;

103

And all allowances besides of plunder
     In fair proportion with their comrades;—then
Juan consented to march on through thunder,
     Which thinned at every step their ranks of men:
And yet the rest rushed eagerly—no wonder,
     For they were heated by the hope of gain,
A thing which happens every where each day—
No Hero trusteth wholly to half-pay.

104

And such is victory, and such is man!
     At least nine-tenths of what we call so;—God
May have another name for half we scan
     As human beings, or his ways are odd.
But to our subject: a brave Tartar Khan,—
     Or “Sultan,” as the author (to whose nod
In prose I bend my humble verse) doth call
This chieftain—somehow would not yield at all:

105

But flanked by five brave sons (such is Polygamy,
     That she spawns warriors by the score, where none
Are prosecuted for that false crime bigamy)
     He never would believe the city won
While courage clung but to a single twig.—Am I
    Describing Priam’s, Peleus’, or Jove’s son?
Neither,—but a good, plain, old, temperate man,
Who fought with his five children in the van.

106

To take him was the point. The truly brave,
     When they behold the brave oppressed with odds,
Are touched with a desire to shield and save;—
     A mixture of wild beasts and demi-gods
Are they—now furious as the sweeping wave,
     Now moved with pity: even as sometimes nods
The rugged tree unto the summer wind,
Compassion breathes along the savage mind.

107

But he would not be taken, and replied
     To all the propositions of surrender
By mowing Christians down on every side,
     As obstinate as Swedish Charles at Bender.
His five brave boys no less the foe defied;
     Whereon the Russian pathos grew less tender,
As being a virtue, like terrestrial patience,
Apt to wear out on trifling provocations.

108

And spite of Johnson and of Juan, who
     Expended all their Eastern phraseology
In begging him, for God’s sake, just to show
     So much less fight as might form an apology
For them in saving such a desperate foe—
    He hewed away, like doctors of theology
When they dispute with sceptics; and with curses
Struck at his friends, as babies beat their nurses.

109

Nay, he had wounded, though but slightly, both
     Juan and Johnson; whereupon they fell,
The first with sighs, the second with an oath,
    Upon his angry Sultanship, pell-mell,
And all around were grown exceeding wroth
    At such a pertinacious Infidel,
And poured upon him and his sons like rain,
Which they resisted like a sandy plain

110

That drinks and still is dry. At last they perished—
     His second son was levelled by a shot;
His third was sabred; and the fourth, most cherished
     Of all the five, on bayonets met his lot;
The fifth, who, by a Christian mother nourished,
     Had been neglected, ill-used, and what not,
Because deformed, yet died all game and bottom,
To save a sire who blushed that he begot him.