At least _he feels it_, and some say he _sees_, Because he runs before it like a pig; Or, if that simple sentence should displease, Say, that he scuds before it like a brig, A schooner, or--but it is time to ease This Canto, ere my Muse perceives fatigue. The next shall ring a peal to shake all people, Like a bob-major from a village steeple. LXXXVI. Hark! through the silence of the cold, dull night, The hum of armies gathering rank on rank! Lo! dusky masses steal in dubious sight Along the leaguered wall and bristling bank Of the armed river, while with straggling light The stars peep through the vapours dim and dank, Which curl in various wreaths:--how soon the smoke Of Hell shall pall them in a deeper cloak! LXXXVII. Here pause we for the present--as even then That awful pause, dividing Life from Death, Struck for an instant on the hearts of men,-- Thousands of whom were drawing their last breath! A moment--and all will be Life again! The march! the charge! the shouts of either faith, Hurrah! and Allah! and one moment more-- The death-cry drowning in the Battle's roar.[hz][411] FOOTNOTES: {302}[364] ["These [the seventh and eighth] Cantos contain a full detail (like the storm in Canto Second) of the siege and assault of Ismael, with much of sarcasm on those butchers in large business, your mercenary soldiery.... With these things and these fellows it is necessary, in the present clash of philosophy and tyranny, to throw away the scabbard. I know it is against fearful odds; but the battle must be fought; and it will be eventually for the good of mankind, whatever it may be for the individual who risks himself."--Letter to Moore, August 8, 1822, _Letters_, 1901, vi. 101.] [365] [Byron attributes this phrase to Orator Henley (_Letters_, 1898, i. 227); and to Bayes in the Duke of Buckingham's play, _The Rehearsal_ (_Letters_, 1901, v. 80).] [hh] _Of Fenelon, of Calvin and of Christ_.--[MS. erased.] [366] [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza vii. line 1, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 103, note 2.] [hi] _Picking a pebble on the shore of Truth_.--[MS. erased.] [367] ["Sir Isaac Newton, a little before he died, said, 'I don't know what I may seem to the world; but, as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.'"--Spence, _Anecdotes_ (quoting Chevalier Ramsay), 1858, p. 40.] {304}[hj] _From fools who dread to know the truth of Life_.--[MS. erased.] [368] [Compare "Inscription on the Monument of a Newfoundland Dog," lines 7, sq., _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 280.]