Don Juan
Page 34
Of heroism, and took his place with solemn
Air’midst the rest, who kept their valiant faces
And levelled weapons still against the glacis.
35
Just at this crisis up came Johnson too,
Who had retreated, as the phrase is when
Men run away much rather than go through
Destruction’s jaws into the devil’s den;
But Johnson was a clever fellow, who
Knew when and how ‘to cut and come again’
And never ran away, except when running
Was nothing but a valourous kind of cunning.
36
And so when all his corps were dead or dying,
Except Don Juan – a mere novice, whose
More virgin valour never dreamt of flying,
From ignorance of danger, which indues
Its votaries, like innocence relying
On its own strength, with careless nerves and thews –
Johnson retired a little just to rally
Those who catch cold in ‘shadows of death’s valley’.
37
And there, a little sheltered from the shot,
Which rained from bastion, battery, parapet,
Rampart, wall, casement, house – for there was not
In this extensive city, sore beset
By Christian soldiery, a single spot
Which did not combat like the devil, as yet –
He found a number of chasseurs, all scattered
By the resistance of the chase they battered.
38
And these he called on, and what’s strange, they came
Unto his call, unlike ‘the spirits from
The vasty deep’, to whom you may exclaim,
Says Hotspur, long ere they will leave their home.
Their reasons were uncertainty or shame
At shrinking from a bullet or a bomb,
And that odd impulse, which in wars or creeds
Makes men like cattle follow him who leads.
39
By Jove, he was a noble fellow, Johnson,
And though his name, than Ajax or Achilles
Sounds less harmonious, underneath the sun soon
We shall not see his likeness. He could kill his
Man quite as quietly as blows the monsoon
Her steady breath (which some months the same still is).
Seldom he varied feature, hue, or muscle
And could be very busy without bustle.
40
And therefore when he ran away, he did so
Upon reflection, knowing that behind
He would find others who would fain be rid so
Of idle apprehensions, which like wind
Trouble heroic stomachs. Though their lids so
Oft are soon closed, all heroes are not blind,
But when they light upon immediate death,
Retire a little merely to take breath.
41
But Johnson only ran off, to return
With many other warriors, as we said,
Unto that rather somewhat misty bourn,
Which Hamlet tells us is a pass of dread.
To Jack howe’er this gave but slight concern.
His soul (like galvanism upon the dead)
Acted upon the living as on wire
And led them back into the heaviest fire.
42
Egad, they found the second time what they
The first time thought quite terrible enough
To fly from, malgré all which people say
Of glory and all that immortal stuff
Which fills a regiment (besides their pay,
That daily shilling which makes warriors tough).
They found on their return the selfsame welcome,
Which made some think, and others know, a hell come.
43
They fell as thick as harvests beneath hail,
Grass before scythes, or corn below the sickle,
Proving that trite old truth that life’s as frail
As any other boon for which men stickle.
The Turkish batteries thrashed them like a flail
Or a good boxer – into a sad pickle
Putting the very bravest, who were knocked
Upon the head before their guns were cocked.
44
The Turks behind the traverses and flanks
Of the next bastion fired away like devils
And swept, as gales sweep foam away, whole ranks.
However, heaven knows how, the Fate who levels
Towns, nations, worlds in her revolving pranks
So ordered it amidst these sulphury revels
That Johnson and some few who had not scampered
Reached the interior talus of the rampart.
45
First one or two, then five, six, and a dozen
Came mounting quickly up, for it was now
All neck or nothing, as like pitch or rosin
Flame was showered forth above as well’s below,
So that you scarce could say who best had chosen,
The gentlemen that were the first to show
Their martial faces on the parapet,
Or those who thought it brave to wait as yet.
46
But those who scaled found out that their advance
Was favoured by an accident or blunder.
The Greek or Turkish Cohorn’s ignorance
Had palisadoed in a way you’d wonder
To see in forts of Netherlands or France
(Though these to our Gibraltar must knock under).
Right in the middle of the parapet
Just named, these palisades were primly set,
47
So that on either side some nine or ten
Paces were left, whereon you could contrive
To march, a great convenience to our men,
At least to all those who were left alive,
Who thus could form a line and fight again.
And that which further aided them to strive
Was that they could kick down the palisades,
Which scarcely rose much higher than grass blades.
48
Amongst the first – I will not say the first,
For such precedence upon such occasions
Will oftentimes make deadly quarrels burst
Out between friends as well as allied nations.
The Briton must be bold who really durst
Put to such trial John Bull’s partial patience,
As say that Wellington at Waterloo
Was beaten, though the Prussians say so too,
49
And that if Blücher, Bulow, Gneisenau,
And God knows who besides in ‘au’ and ‘ou’
Had not come up in time to cast an awe
Into the hearts of those who fought till now,
As tigers combat with an empty craw,
The Duke of Wellington had ceased to show
His orders, also to receive his pensions,
Which are the heaviest that our history mentions.
50
But never mind. ‘God save the king’ and kings!
For if he don’t, I doubt if men will longer.
I think I hear a little bird, who sings
The people by and by will be the stronger.
The veriest jade will wince whose harness wrings
So much into the raw as quite to wrong her
Beyond the rules of posting; and the mob
At last fall sick of imitating Job.
51
At first it grumbles, then it swears, and then
Like David flings smooth pebbles’gainst a giant.
At last it takes to weapons such as men
Snatch when despair makes human hearts less pliant.
Then comes the tug of war;’twill come again
I rather doubt and I would fain say
‘fie on’t’,
If I had not perceived that revolution
Alone can save the earth from hell’s pollution.
52
But to continue. I say not the first,
But of the first, our little friend Don Juan
Walked o’er the walls of Ismail as if nurst
Amidst such scenes, though this was quite a new one
To him, and I should hope to most. The thirst
Of glory, which so pierces through and through one,
Pervaded him, although a generous creature,
As warm in heart as feminine in feature.
53
And here he was, who upon woman’s breast
Even from a child felt like a child, howe’er
The man in all the rest might be confest.
To him it was Elysium to be there.
And he could even withstand that awkward test
Which Rousseau points out to the dubious fair,
‘Observe your lover when he leaves your arms’;
But Juan never left them while they had charms,
54
Unless compelled by fate or wave or wind
Or near relations, who are much the same.
But here he was, where each tie that can bind
Humanity must yield to steel and flame.
And he whose very body was all mind,
Flung here by fate or circumstance, which tame
The loftiest, hurried by the time and place,
Dashed on like a spurred blood-horse in a race.
55
So was his blood stirred while he found resistance,
As is the hunter’s at the five-bar gate
Or double post and rail, where the existence
Of Britain’s youth depends upon their weight,
The lightest being the safest. At a distance
He hated cruelty as all men hate
Blood, until heated, and even then his own
At times would curdle o’er some heavy groan.
56
The General Lascy, who had been hard prest,
Seeing arrive an aid so opportune
As were some hundred youngsters all abreast,
Who came as if just dropped down from the moon,
To Juan, who was nearest him, addressed
His thanks and hopes to take the city soon,
Not reckoning him to be a ‘base Bezonian’
(As Pistol calls it), but a young Livonian.
57
Juan, to whom he spoke in German, knew
As much of German as of Sanscrit and
In answer made an inclination to
The General who held him in command;
For seeing one with ribbons, black and blue,
Stars, medals, and a bloody sword in hand,
Addressing him in tones which seemed to thank,
He recognized an officer of rank.
58
Short speeches pass between two men who speak
No common language; and besides in time
Of war and taking towns, when many a shriek
Rings o’er the dialogue, and many a crime
Is perpetrated ere a word can break
Upon the ear, and sounds of horror chime
In like church bells with sigh, howl, groan, yell, prayer,
There cannot be much conversation there.
59
And therefore all we have related in
Two long octaves passed in a little minute,
But in the same small minute every sin
Contrived to get itself comprised within it.
The very cannon, deafened by the din,
Grew dumb, for you might almost hear a linnet
As soon as thunder’midst the general noise
Of human nature’s agonizing voice.
60
The town was entered. Oh eternity!
‘God made the country, and man made the town,’
So Cowper says, and I begin to be
Of his opinion when I see cast down
Rome, Babylon, Tyre, Carthage, Nineveh,
All walls men know and many never known,
And pondering on the present and the past,
To deem the woods shall be our home at last.
61
Of all men, saving Sylla the man-slayer,
Who passes for in life and death most lucky,
Of the great names which in our faces stare,
The General Boon, backwoodsman of Kentucky,
Was happiest amongst mortals anywhere.
For killing nothing but a bear or buck, he
Enjoyed the lonely vigorous, harmless days
Of his old age in wilds of deepest maze.
62
Crime came not near him; she is not the child
Of solitude. Health shrank not from him, for
Her home is in the rarely-trodden wild,
Where if men seek her not, and death be more
Their choice than life, forgive them, as beguiled
By habit to what their own hearts abhor
In cities caged. The present case in point I
Cite is that Boon lived hunting up to ninety.
63
And what’s still stranger left behind a name
For which men vainly decimate the throng,
Not only famous, but of that good fame
(Without which glory’s but a tavern song),
Simple, serene, the antipodes of shame,
Which hate nor envy e’er could tinge with wrong,
An active hermit, even in age the child
Of Nature or the man of Ross run wild.
64
’Tis true he shrank from men even of his nation;
When they built up unto his darling trees,
He moved some hundred miles off for a station
Where there were fewer houses and more ease.
The inconvenience of civilization
Is that you neither can be pleased nor please;
But where he met the individual man
He showed himself as kind as mortal can.
65
He was not all alone; around him grew
A sylvan tribe of children of the chase,
Whose young, unwakened world was ever new.
Nor sword nor sorrow yet had left a trace
On her unwrinkled brow, nor could you view
A frown on Nature’s or on human face.
The freeborn forest found and kept them free
And fresh as is a torrent or a tree.
66
And tall and strong and swift of foot were they,
Beyond the dwarfing city’s pale abortions,
Because their thoughts had never been the prey
Of care or gain. The green woods were their portions.
No sinking spirits told them they grew grey.
No Fashion made them apes of her distortions.
Simple they were, not savage; and their rifles,
Though very true, were not yet used for trifles.
67
Motion was in their days, rest in their slumbers,
And cheerfulness the handmaid of their toil.
Nor yet too many nor too few their numbers.
Corruption could not make their hearts her soil;
The lust which stings, the splendour which encumbers
With the free foresters divide no spoil.
Serene, not sullen, were the solitudes
Of this unsighing people of the woods.
68
So much for Nature, by way of variety.
Now back to thy great joys, civilization,
And the sweet consequence of large society:
War, pestilence, the despot’s desolation,
The kingly scourge, the lust of notoriety,
The millions slain by soldiers for their ration,
The scenes like Catherine’s boudoir at threescore,
With Ismail’s storm to soften it t
he more.
69
The town was entered; first one column made
Its sanguinary way good, then another.
The reeking bayonet and the flashing blade
Gashed’gainst the scimitar. And babe and mother
With distant shrieks were heard Heaven to upbraid.
Still closer sulphury clouds began to smother
The breath of morn and man, where foot by foot
The maddened Turks their city still dispute.
70
Koutousow, he who afterwards beat back
(With some assistance from the frost and snow)
Napoleon on his bold and bloody track,
It happened was himself beat back just now.
He was a jolly fellow and could crack
His jest alike in face of friend or foe,
Though life and death and victory were at stake.
But here it seemed his jokes had ceased to take,
71
For having thrown himself into a ditch,
Followed in haste by various grenadiers,
Whose blood the puddle greatly did enrich,
He climbed to where the parapet appears,
But there his project reached its utmost pitch
(’Mongst other deaths the General Ribaupierre’s
Was much regretted), for the Mussulmen
Threw them all down into the ditch again.
72
And had it not been for some stray troops landing
They knew not where, being carried by the stream
To some spot where they lost their understanding
And wandered up and down as in a dream,
Until they reached as daybreak was expanding
That which a portal to their eyes did seem,
The great and gay Koutousow might have lain
Where three parts of his column yet remain.
73
And scrambling round the rampart, these same troops
After the taking of the cavalier,
Just as Koutousow’s most ‘forlorn of hopes’
Took like chameleons some slight tinge of fear,
Opened the gate called Kilia to the groups ‘.
Of baffled heroes who stood shyly near,
Sliding knee-deep in lately frozen mud,
Now thawed into a marsh of human blood.
74
The Kozaks, or if so you please, Cossacks
(I don’t much pique myself upon orthography,
So that I do not grossly err in facts,
Statistics, tactics, politics and geography),
Having been used to serve on horses’ backs,
And no great dilettanti in topography
Of fortresses, but fighting where it pleases
Their chiefs to order, were all cut to pieces.
75
Their column, though the Turkish batteries thundered
Upon them, ne’ertheless had reached the rampart
And naturally thought they could have plundered
The city without being further hampered;