[288] [Stanzas xvii., xviii., were written after a visit to Waterloo. When Byron was in Brussels, a friend of his boyhood, Pryse Lockhart Gordon, called upon him and offered his services. He escorted him to the field of Waterloo, and received him at his house in the evening. Mrs. Gordon produced her album, and begged for an autograph. The next morning Byron copied into the album the two stanzas which he had written the day before. Lines 5-8 of the second stanza (xviii.) ran thus-- "Here his last flight the haughty Eagle flew, Then tore with bloody beak the fatal plain, Pierced with the shafts of banded nations through ..." The autograph suggested an illustration to an artist, R. R. Reinagle (1775-1863), "a pencil-sketch of a spirited chained eagle, grasping the earth with his talons." Gordon showed the vignette to Byron, who wrote in reply, "Reinagle is a better poet and a better ornithologist than I am; eagles and all birds of prey attack with their talons and not with their beaks, and I have altered the line thus-- "'Then tore with bloody talon the rent plain.'" (See _Personal Memoirs of Pryse Lockhart Gordon_, 1830, ii. 327, 328.)] [ha] ----_and still must be_.--[MS.] [hb] ----_the fatal Waterloo_.--[MS.] [hc] _Here his last flight the haughty eagle flew_.--[MS.] _Then bit with bloody beak the rent plain_.--[MS. erased.] _Then tore with bloody beak_----.--[MS.] [hd] {227} _And Gaul must wear the links of her own broken chain_.--[MS.] [289] [With this "obstinate questioning" of the final import and outcome of "that world-famous Waterloo," compare the _Ode from the French_, "We do not curse thee, Waterloo," written in 1815, and published by John Murray in _Poems_ (1816). Compare, too, _The Age of Waterloo_, v. 93, "Oh, bloody and most bootless Waterloo!" and _Don Juan_, Canto VIII. stanzas xlviii.-l., etc. Shelley, too, in his sonnet on the _Feelings of a Republican on the Fall of Bonaparte_ (1816), utters a like lament (Shelley's _Works_, 1895, ii. 385)-- "I know Too late, since thou and France are in the dust, That Virtue owns a more eternal foe Than Force or Fraud: old Custom, legal Crime, And bloody Faith, the foulest birth of Time." Even Wordsworth, after due celebration of this "victory sublime," in his sonnet _Emperors and Kings, etc._ (_Works_, 1889, p. 557), solemnly admonishes the "powers"-- "Be just, be grateful; nor, the oppressor's creed Reviving heavier chastisement deserve Than ever forced unpitied hearts to bleed." But the Laureate had no misgivings, and in _The Poet's Pilgrimage_, iv. 60, celebrates the national apotheosis-- "Peace hath she won ... with her victorious hand Hath won thro' rightful war auspicious peace; Nor this alone, but that in every land The withering rule of violence may cease. Was ever War with such blest victory crowned! Did ever Victory with such fruits abound!"]