When the riot of flames, ruin, smoke, steel and blood,
Announces an army rolls along as a flood,
Which I follow, to harry the clamorous ranks,
Sharp-goading the laggards and pressing the flanks,
Till, a thresher ’mid ripest of corn, up I stand
With an oak for a flail in my unflagging hand.
Rise the groans! rise the screams! on my feet fall
vain tears
As the roar of my laughter redoubles their fears.
I am naked. At armor of steel I should joke—
True, I’m helmed—a brass pot you
could draw with ten yoke.
I look for no ladder to invade the king’s hall—
I stride o’er the ramparts, and down the walls
fall,
Till choked are the ditches with the stones, dead
and quick,
Whilst the flagstaff I use ’midst my teeth as
a pick.
Oh, when cometh my turn to succumb like my prey,
May brave men my body snatch away from th’ array
Of the crows—may they heap on the rocks
till they loom
Like a mountain, befitting a colossus’ tomb!
Foreign Quarterly Review (adapted)
("Monseigneur le Duc de Bretagne.")
[VI., October, 1825.]
My lord the Duke of Brittany
Has summoned his barons bold—
Their names make a fearful litany!
Among them you will not meet any
But men of giant mould.
Proud earls, who dwell in donjon keep,
And steel-clad knight and
peer,
Whose forts are girt with a moat cut deep—
But none excel in soldiership
My own loved cymbaleer.
Clashing his cymbals, forth he went,
With a bold and gallant bearing;
Sure for a captain he was meant,
To judge his pride with courage blent,
And the cloth of gold he’s
wearing.
But in my soul since then I feel
A fear in secret creeping;
And to my patron saint I kneel,
That she may recommend his weal
To his guardian-angel’s
keeping.
I’ve begged our abbot Bernardine
His prayers not to relax;
And to procure him aid divine
I’ve burnt upon Saint Gilda’s shrine
Three pounds of virgin wax.
Our Lady of Loretto knows
The pilgrimage I’ve
vowed:
“To wear the scallop I propose,
If health and safety from the foes
My lover be allowed.”
No letter (fond affection’s gage!)
From him could I require,
The pain of absence to assuage—
A vassal-maid can have no page,
A liegeman has no squire.
This day will witness, with the duke’s,
My cymbaleer’s return:
Gladness and pride beam in my looks,
Delay my heart impatient brooks,
All meaner thoughts I spurn.
Back from the battlefield elate
His banner brings each peer;
Come, let us see, at the ancient gate,
The martial triumph pass in state—
With the princes my cymbaleer.
