However this may be, 't is pretty sure The Russian officer for life was lamed, For the Turk's teeth stuck faster than a skewer, And left him 'midst the invalid and maimed: The regimental surgeon could not cure His patient, and, perhaps, was to be blamed More than the head of the inveterate foe, Which was cut off, and scarce even then let go. LXXXVI. But then the fact's a fact--and 't is the part Of a true poet to escape from fiction Whene'er he can; for there is little art in leaving verse more free from the restriction Of Truth than prose, unless to suit the mart For what is sometimes called poetic diction, And that outrageous appetite for lies Which Satan angles with for souls, like flies.[ij] LXXXVII. The city's taken, but not rendered!--No! There's not a Moslem that hath yielded sword: The blood may gush out, as the Danube's flow Rolls by the city wall; but deed nor word Acknowledge aught of dread of Death or foe: In vain the yell of victory is roared By the advancing Muscovite--the groan Of the last foe is echoed by his own. LXXXVIII. The bayonet pierces and the sabre cleaves, And human lives are lavished everywhere, As the year closing whirls the scarlet leaves[ik] When the stripped forest bows to the bleak air, And groans; and thus the peopled city grieves, Shorn of its best and loveliest, and left bare; But still it falls in vast and awful splinters, As oaks blown down with all their thousand winters. LXXXIX. It is an awful topic--but 't is not My cue for any time to be terrific: For checkered as is seen our human lot With good, and bad, and worse, alike prolific Of melancholy merriment, to quote Too much of one sort would be soporific;-- Without, or with, offence to friends or foes, I sketch your world exactly as it goes. XC. And one good action in the midst of crimes Is "quite refreshing," in the affected phrase[461] Of these ambrosial, Pharisaic times, With all their pretty milk-and-water ways, And may serve therefore to bedew these rhymes, A little scorched at present with the blaze Of conquest and its consequences, which Make Epic poesy so rare and rich. XCI. Upon a taken bastion, where there lay Thousands of slaughtered men, a yet warm group Of murdered women, who had found their way To this vain refuge, made the good heart droop And shudder;--while, as beautiful as May, A female child of ten years tried to stoop And hide her little palpitating breast Amidst the bodies lulled in bloody rest.[462] XCII.