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(From Paris in 1815)
MAGNIFICENCE of ruin! what has time | |
| In all it ever gazed upon of war, | |
| Of the wild rage of storm, or deadly clime, | |
| Seen, with that battle’s vengeance to compare? | |
| How glorious shone the invader’s pomp afar! | 5 |
| Like pampered lions from the spoil they came; | |
| The land before them silence and despair, | |
| The land behind them massacre and flame; | |
| Blood will have tenfold blood. What are they now? A name. | |
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| Homeward by hundred thousands, column-deep, | 10 |
| Broad square, loose squadron, rolling like the flood, | |
| When mighty torrents from their channels leap, | |
| Rushed through the land the haughty multitude, | |
| Billow on endless billow; on through wood, | |
| O’er rugged hill, down sunless, marshy vale, | 15 |
| The death-devoted moved, to clangor rude | |
| Of drum and horn, and dissonant clash of mail, | |
| Glancing disastrous light before that sunbeam pale. | |
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| Again they reached thee, Borodino! still | |
| Upon the loaded soil the carnage lay, | 20 |
| The human harvest, now stark, stiff, and chill, | |
| Friend, foe, stretched thick together, clay to clay; | |
| In vain the startled legions burst away; | |
| The land was all one naked sepulchre; | |
| The shrinking eye still glanced on grim decay, | 25 |
| Still did the hoof and wheel their passage tear, | |
| Through cloven helms and arms, and corpses mouldering drear. | |
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| The field was as they left it; fosse and fort | |
| Steaming with slaughter still, but desolate; | |
| The cannon flung dismantled by its port; | 30 |
| Each knew the mound, the black ravine whose strait | |
| Was won and lost, and thronged with dead, till fate | |
| Had fixed upon the victor,—half undone. | |
| There was the hill, from which their eyes elate | |
| Had seen the burst of Moscow’s golden zone; | 35 |
| But death was at their heels; they shuddered and rushed on. | |
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| The hour of vengeance strikes. Hark to the gale! | |
| As it bursts hollow through the rolling clouds, | |
| That from the north in sullen grandeur sail | |
| Like floating Alps. Advancing darkness broods | 40 |
| Upon the wild horizon, and the woods, | |
| Now sinking into brambles, echo shrill, | |
| As the gust sweeps them, and those upper floods | |
| Shoot on their leafless boughs the sleet-drops chill, | |
| That on the hurrying crowds in freezing showers distil. | 45 |
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| They reach the wilderness! The majesty | |
| Of solitude is spread before their gaze, | |
| Stern nakedness,—dark earth and wrathful sky. | |
| If ruins were there, they long had ceased to blaze; | |
| If blood was shed, the ground no more betrays, | 50 |
| Even by a skeleton, the crime of man; | |
| Behind them rolls the deep and drenching haze, | |
| Wrapping their rear in night; before their van | |
| The struggling daylight shows the unmeasured desert wan. | |
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| Still on they sweep, as if their hurrying march | 55 |
| Could bear them from the rushing of His wheel | |
| Whose chariot is the whirlwind. Heaven’s clear arch | |
| At once is covered with a livid veil; | |
| In mixed and fighting heaps the deep clouds reel; | |
| Upon the dense horizon hangs the sun, | 60 |
| In sanguine light, an orb of burning steel; | |
| The snows wheel down through twilight, thick and dun; | |
| Now tremble, men of blood, the judgment has begun! | |
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| The trumpet of the northern winds has blown, | |
| And it is answered by the dying roar | 65 |
| Of armies on that boundless field o’erthrown; | |
| Now in the awful gusts the desert hoar | |
| Is tempested, a sea without a shore, | |
| Lifting its feathery waves. The legions fly; | |
| Volley on volley down the hailstones pour; | 70 |
| Blind, famished, frozen, mad, the wanderers die, | |
| And dying, hear the storm but wilder thunder by. | |
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| Such is the hand of Heaven! A human blow | |
| Had crushed them in the fight, or flung the chain | |
| Round them where Moscow’s stately towers were low | 75 |
| And all bestilled. But Thou! thy battle-plain | |
| Was a whole empire; that devoted train | |
| Must war from day to day with storm and gloom | |
| (Man following, like the wolves, to rend the slain), | |
| Must lie from night to night as in a tomb, | 80 |
| Must fly, toil, bleed for home; yet never see that home. | |
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