And such they are—and such they will be found: Not so Leonidas and Washington, Whose every battle-field is holy ground, Which breathes of nations saved, not worlds undone. How sweetly on the ear such echoes sound! While the mere victor’s may appal or stun The servile and the vain, such names will be A watchword till the future shall be free. The night was dark, and the thick mist allow’d Nought to be seen save the artillery’s flame, Which arch’d the horizon like a fiery cloud, And in the Danube’s waters shone the same— A mirror’d hell! the volleying roar, and loud Long booming of each peal on peal, o’ercame The ear far more than thunder; for Heaven’s flashes Spare, or smite rarely—man’s make millions ashes! The column order’d on the assault scarce pass’d Beyond the Russian batteries a few toises, When up the bristling Moslem rose at last, Answering the Christian thunders with like voices: Then one vast fire, air, earth, and stream embraced, Which rock’d as ’twere beneath the mighty noises; While the whole rampart blazed like Etna, when The restless Titan hiccups in his den. And one enormous shout of ‘Allah!’ rose In the same moment, loud as even the roar Of war’s most mortal engines, to their foes Hurling defiance: city, stream, and shore Resounded ‘Allah!’ and the clouds which close With thick’ning canopy the conflict o’er, Vibrate to the Eternal name. Hark! through All sounds it pierceth ‘Allah! Allah! Hu!’ The columns were in movement one and all, But of the portion which attack’d by water, Thicker than leaves the lives began to fall, Though led by Arseniew, that great son of slaughter, As brave as ever faced both bomb and ball. ‘Carnage’ (so Wordsworth tells you) ‘is God’s daughter:’ If he speak truth, she is Christ’s sister, and Just now behaved as in the Holy Land. The Prince de Ligne was wounded in the knee; Count Chapeau-Bras, too, had a ball between His cap and head, which proves the head to be Aristocratic as was ever seen, Because it then received no injury More than the cap; in fact, the ball could mean No harm unto a right legitimate head: ‘Ashes to ashes’—why not lead to lead? Also the General Markow, Brigadier, Insisting on removal of the prince Amidst some groaning thousands dying near,— All common fellows, who might writhe and wince, And shriek for water into a deaf ear,— The General Markow, who could thus evince His sympathy for rank, by the same token, To teach him greater, had his own leg broken. Three hundred cannon threw up their emetic, And thirty thousand muskets flung their pills Like hail, to make a bloody diuretic. Mortality! thou hast thy monthly bills; Thy plagues, thy famines, thy physicians, yet tick, Like the death-watch, within our ears the ills Past, present, and to come;—but all may yield To the true portrait of one battle-field.