But as it happens to brave men, they blundered.
The Turks at first pretended to have scampered,
Only to draw them’twixt two bastion corners,
From whence they sallied on those Christian scorners.
76
Then being taken by the tail – a taking
Fatal to bishops as to soldiers – these
Cossacks were all cut off as day was breaking
And found their lives were let at a short lease,
But perished without shivering or shaking,
Leaving as ladders their heaped carcasses,
O’er which Lieutenant Colonel Yesouskoi
Marched with the brave battalion of Polouzki.
77
This valiant man killed all the Turks he met,
But could not eat them, being in his turn
Slain by some Mussulmen, who would not yet
Without resistance see their city burn.
The walls were won, but ‘twas an even bet
Which of the armies would have cause to mourn.
’Twas blow for blow, disputing inch by inch,
For one would not retreat, nor t’other flinch.
78
Another column also suffered much.
And here we may remark with the historian,
You should but give few cartridges to such
Troops as are meant to march with greatest glory on.
When matters must be carried by the touch
Of the bright bayonet, and they all should hurry on,
They sometimes, with a hankering for existence,
Keep merely firing at a foolish distance.
79
A junction of the General Meknop’s men
(Without the General, who had fallen some time
Before, being badly seconded just then)
Was made at length with those who dared to climb
The death-disgorging rampart once again.
And though the Turk’s resistance was sublime,
They took the bastion, which the Seraskier
Defended at a price extremely dear.
80
Juan and Johnson and some volunteers
Among the foremost offered him good quarter,
A word which little suits with Seraskiers,
Or at least suited not this valiant Tartar.
He died, deserving well his country’s teats,
A savage sort of military martyr.
An English naval officer, who wished
To make him prisoner, was also dished,
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 rendered. No,
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 everywhere,
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 checkered 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.
91
Upon a taken bastion where there lay
Thousands of slaughtered men, a yet warm group
Of murdered women, who had found their way
To this vain refuge, made the good heart droop
And shudder; while, as beautiful as May,
A female child often years tried to stoop
And hide her little palpitating breast
Amidst the bodies lulled in bloody rest.
92
Two villainous Cossacks pursued the child
With flashing eyes and weapons. Matched with them
The rudest brute that roams Siberia’s wild
Has feelings pure and polished as a gem –
The bear is civilized, the wolf is mild.
And whom for this at last must we condemn?
All arts to teach their subjects to destroy?
93
Their sabres glittered o’er her little head,
Whence her fair hair rose twining with affright;
Her hidden face was plunged amidst the dead.
When Juan caught a glimpse of this sad sight,
I shall not say exactly what he said,
Because it might not solace ‘ears polite’,
But what he did was to lay on their backs,
The readiest way of reasoning with Cossacks.
94
One’s hip he slashed and split the other’s shoulder
And drove them with their brutal yells to seek
If there might be chirurgeons who could solder
The wounds they richly merited, and shriek
Their baffled rage and pain. While waxing colder
As he turned o’er each pale and gory cheek,
Don Juan raised his little captive from
The heap a moment more had made her tomb.
95
And she was chill as they, and on her face
A slender streak of blood announced how near
Her fate had been to that of all her race.
For the same blow which laid her mother here
Had scarred her brow and left its crimson trace
As the last link with all she had held dear.
But else unhurt, she opened her large eyes
And gazed on Juan with a wild surprise.
96
Just at this instant while their eyes were fixed
Upon each other with dilated glance,
In Juan’s look, pain, pleasure, hope, fear, mixed
With joy to save and dread of some mischance
Unto his protégée, while hers, transfixed
With infant terrors, glared as from a trance,
A pure, transparent, pale, yet radiant face,
Like to a lighted alabaster vase;
97
Up came John Johnson (I will not say Jack,
For that were vulgar, cold, and commonplace
On great occasions, such as an attack
On cities, as hath been the present case) –
Up Johnson came with hundreds at his back,
Exclaiming, ‘Juan, Juan! On, boy, brace
Your arm, and I’ll bet Moscow to a dollar
That you and I will win St George’s collar.
98
‘The Seraskier is knocked upon the head,
But the stone bastion still remains, wherein
The old Pasha sits among some hundreds dead,
Smoking his pipe quite calmly’midst the din
Of our artillery and his own.’Tis said
Our killed, already piled up to the chin,
Lie round the battery; but still it batters,
And grape in volleys, like a vineyard, scatters.
99
‘Then up with me!’ But Juan answered, ‘Look
Upon this child – I saved her – must not leave
Her life to chance, but point me out some nook
Of safety, where she less may shrink and grieve,
And I am with you.’ Whereon Johnson took
A glance around and shrugged, and twitched his sleeve
And black silk neckcloth, and replied, ‘You’re right.
Poor thing! What’s to be done? I’m puzzled quite.’
100
Said Juan, ‘Whatsoever is to be
Done, I’ll not quit her till she seems secure
Of present life a good deal more than we.’
Quoth Johnson, ‘Neither will I quite ensure,
But at the least you may die gloriously.’
Juan replied, ‘At least I will endure
Whate’er is to be borne, but not resign
This child, who is parentless and therefore mine.’
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 loath 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 everywhere 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 opprest with odds,
Are touched with a desire to shield and save.
A mixture of wild beasts and demigods
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,
An
d 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, illused, and what not,
Because deformed, yet died all game and bottom
To save a sire who blushed that he begot him.
111
The eldest was a true and tameless Tartar,
As great a scorner of the Nazarene
As ever Mahomet picked out for a martyr,
Who only saw the black-eyed girls in green,
Who make the beds of those who won’t take quarter
On earth, in paradise; and when once seen,
Those houris like all other pretty creatures
Do just whate’er they please, by dint of features.
112
And what they pleased to do with the young khan
In heaven, I know not nor pretend to guess,
But doubtless they prefer a fine young man
To tough old heroes and can do no less.
And that’s the cause no doubt why, if we scan
A field of battle’s ghastly wilderness,
For one rough, weather-beaten, veteran body,
You’ll find ten thousand handsome coxcombs bloody.
113
Your houris also have a natural pleasure
In lopping off your lately married men,
Before the bridal hours have danced their measure
And the sad, second moon grows dim again,
Or dull repentance hath had dreary leisure
To wish him back a bachelor now and then.
And thus your houri (it may be) disputes
Of these brief blossoms the immediate fruits.
114
Thus the young khan with houris in his sight
Thought not upon the charms of four young brides,
But bravely rushed on his first heavenly night.
In short howe’er our better faith derides,
These black-eyed virgins make the Moslems fight,
As though there were one heaven and none besides,
Whereas if all be true we hear of heaven
And hell, there must at least be six or seven.
115
So fully flashed the phantom on his eyes
That when the very lance was in his heart,
He shouted ‘Allah’ and saw paradise
With all its veil of mystery drawn apart,
And bright eternity without disguise
On his soul, like a ceaseless sunrise, dart,
With prophets, houris, angels, saints descried
In one voluptuous blaze, and then he died.
116
But with a heavenly rapture on his face,
The good old khan, who long had ceased to see
Houris or aught except his florid race,
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