Well answered! Where the river widest swells ’Neath rapid Ocean’s amorous embrace, And on the Siérra swung the Convent bells For matin-lauds and vesper-song of grace, The howitzer ascends that holy place, And from the belfry vomits forth its fire; From cloisters dim whose cowls the shakos chase The stabled charger bids the monk retire, And tell his beads apart till pass War’s tempest dire. XII. Now Mont’ Orgullo vaunting Pride doth shew Less proudly throned, for climb Olía’s side The straining oxen, dragging upward slow, With starting eye-ball and hoof opening wide, Cannon and mortar o’er the foaming tide Terrific hung. And Man the work completes, Where fail the labouring beasts, till e’en Mount Pride O’ercrested now from far defiance meets; And from the Miradór who gazeth slaughter greets! XIII. The booming salvo hurls its ceaseless shower, Saint John’s huge bastion slowly crumbling falls, Destruction seizes many a stately tower, And totter to their base Tirynthian walls Beneath the fury of resistless balls, From circling orchards heaved by Britain’s sons; And snake-like trench advancing swift appals The garrison, as o’er the isthmus runs The deadly sapper’s stroke that like an earthquake stuns. XIV. And sally forth the warlike sons of France, As prisoned lions vainly lash the bar, To foil the miner in his bold advance, And rages on the isthmus fiercest war; Full many a shrapnell shell doth strew afar Its withering shower of lead in thickest hail. But what can like the British bayonet mar Thy prowess, France? Before ’t the sallyers quail, And fly like scattered hawks flung headlong on the gale. XV. With glancing steel upon the trenches’ edge Confronted Cameron the advancing host; And swift retired before that gleaming wedge The light-limbed chasseur, battling Gallia’s boast. And, rough fascine and earth-piled gabion most The ground demanding, rose the isthmus o’er Banquette and parapet, the foremost post Of war for those who sap and mine explore, And lithe artilleryman and lynx-eyed caçadore. XVI. And now the isthmus boasts its battery too; At shortest range ’tis thundering ’gainst the wall. Saint John protect thy bastion, or ’twill rue; Sebastian, guard thy castle, or ’twill fall! And lo, where shells ascending vertical, Like iron disc by surest player cast, Unerring light the townsmen to appal, And, scattering hundred deaths, with ruin blast The region doomed where’er that tempest dire hath past. XVII.