XIII. Then, WELLINGTON! thy piercing eye This crisis caught of destiny— The British host had stood That morn ’gainst charge of sword and lance As their own ocean-rocks hold stance, But when thy voice had said, “Advance!” They were their ocean’s flood.— O Thou, whose inauspicious aim Hath wrought thy host this hour of shame, Think’st thou thy broken bands will bide The terrors of yon rushing tide? Or will thy chosen brook to feel The British shock of levelled steel, Or dost thou turn thine eye Where coming squadrons gleam afar, And fresher thunders wake the war, And other standards fly?— Think not that in yon columns, file Thy conquering troops from distant Dyle— Is Blucher yet unknown? Or dwells not in thy memory still (Heard frequent in thine hour of ill), What notes of hate and vengeance thrill In Prussia’s trumpet-tone?— What yet remains?—shall it be thine To head the relics of thy line In one dread effort more?— The Roman lore thy leisure loved, And than canst tell what fortune proved That Chieftain, who, of yore, Ambition’s dizzy paths essayed And with the gladiators’ aid For empire enterprised— He stood the cast his rashness played, Left not the victims he had made, Dug his red grave with his own blade, And on the field he lost was laid, Abhorred—but not despised. XIV. But if revolves thy fainter thought On safety—howsoever bought,— Then turn thy fearful rein and ride, Though twice ten thousand men have died On this eventful day To gild the military fame Which thou, for life, in traffic tame Wilt barter thus away. Shall future ages tell this tale Of inconsistence faint and frail? And art thou He of Lodi’s bridge, Marengo’s field, and Wagram’s ridge! Or is thy soul like mountain-tide, That, swelled by winter storm and shower, Rolls down in turbulence of power, A torrent fierce and wide; Reft of these aids, a rill obscure, Shrinking unnoticed, mean and poor, Whose channel shows displayed The wrecks of its impetuous course, But not one symptom of the force By which these wrecks were made! XV.