"'Tis done, 'tis past--since Pallas warns in vain; The Furies seize her abdicated reign: 280 Wide o'er the realm they wave their kindling brands, And wring her vitals with their fiery hands. But one convulsive struggle still remains, [xix] And Gaul shall weep ere Albion wear her chains, The bannered pomp of war, the glittering files, [xx] O'er whose gay trappings stern Bellona smiles; The brazen trump, the spirit-stirring drum, That bid the foe defiance ere they come; The hero bounding at his country's call, The glorious death that consecrates his fall, 290 Swell the young heart with visionary charms. And bid it antedate the joys of arms. But know, a lesson you may yet be taught, With death alone are laurels cheaply bought; Not in the conflict Havoc seeks delight, His day of mercy is the day of fight. But when the field is fought, the battle won, Though drenched with gore, his woes are but begun: His deeper deeds as yet ye know by name; The slaughtered peasant and the ravished dame, 300 The rifled mansion and the foe-reaped field, Ill suit with souls at home, untaught to yield. Say with what eye along the distant down Would flying burghers mark the blazing town? How view the column of ascending flames Shake his red shadow o'er the startled Thames? Nay, frown not, Albion! for the torch was thine That lit such pyres from Tagus to the Rhine: Now should they burst on thy devoted coast, Go, ask thy bosom who deserves them most? 310 The law of Heaven and Earth is life for life, And she who raised, in vain regrets, the strife." [Footnote 1: The lines (1-54) with which the Satire begins, down to "As thus, within the walls of Pallas' fane," first appeared (1814) as the opening stanza of the Third Canto of 'The Corsair'. At that time the publication of 'The Curse of Minerva' had been abandoned. (See Byron's 'note' to 'The Corsair', Canto III. st. i. line i.)] [Footnote 2: Idra; 'The Corsair', III. st. i. line 7. Hydra, or Hydrea, is an island on the east coast of the Peloponnese, between the gulfs of Nauplia and Ægina. As an "isle of Greece" it had almost no history until the War of Independence, when its chief town became a "city of refuge" for the inhabitants of the Morea and Northern Greece. Byron was, perhaps, the first poet to give it a name in song.] [Footnote 3: Socrates drank the hemlock a short time before sunset (the hour of execution), notwithstanding the entreaties of his disciples to wait till the sun went down.] [Footnote 4: The twilight in Greece is much shorter than in our own country; the days in winter are longer, but in summer of less duration.]