The harbour teems with life, an amphitheatre Of sulphurous pitch and smoke, and awful noises there. The fiends of hell are loose, the sea has oped its caves, Fate rides upon the deep, and laughs amidst the fray, Which feeds with human prey The monsters of the waves. See, like a furnace boils and steams the burning flood, ’Tis filled with mortal flesh, ’tis red with mortal blood; Devoured by raging flames, drunk by the thirsty wave, The clouds seem palpable,--a thick and solid mass,-- They sink like stone or brass Into their water-grave. Thou ruler of the tomb! Dread hour of suffering, When all the elements,--drop, Muse, thy feeble wing!-- Hell, with its fiends, and all the fiends that man e’er drew There mingled,--Silence, veil that awful memory o’er! I see the hero pour The tears of pity too! O Peter! Great in song, as great in glory once, Look from thy throne sublime upon thy Russia’s sons! See, how thy fleets have won the palm of victory, And hear the triumph sound, even to the gate of heaven,-- The Turkish strength is riven Even in the Turkish sea. Thee Copenhagen saw, the Neptune of the Belt; Now Chesma’s humbled sons before thy flag have knelt. The helpless Greeks have fled,--thy banner sees their shore, Trembling they look around, while thy dread thunder swells, And shakes the Dardanelles, And Smyrna hears its roar. Ye Frenchmen![143] Fear ye not the now advancing flame, Recording, as it flies, your own, your country’s shame? In the dark days of old, your valiant fathers trod In the brave steps of Rome, towards lands of Southern glow; Ye fight with Russians now, Beneath the Moslems’ rod. Where innocence is found, there, there protection wakes; Where Catherine’s voice is heard,--there truth, there justice speaks: A ruler’s virtues are the strength and pride of states, And surely ours shall bloom where Catherine’s virtues stand. O enviable land! Glory is at our gates. Soar, eagle, soar again, spring upward to the flight! For yet the Turkish flag is flaunting in the light: In Chesma’s port it still erects its insolent head, And thou must pour again thy foes’ blood o’er the sea, And crush their treachery, And wide destruction spread! But fame now summons thee from death to life again, The people’s comfort now, their glory to maintain; The hero’s palm is won.--Now turn thee and enhance The hero’s triumphs with the patriot’s milder fame. O Romans! Without shame On Duil’s spoils we glance.