Page:Poems By Chauncy Hare Townshend.djvu/368
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344
WATERLOO.
Wrapt, like the lightning, in its sulphurous shroud,
And urge, as swift, their fiery coursers on,
Where Havoc scents her prey o'er Mount St. John.
Can yon small bands, like lonely forts, dispers'd
O'er the wide plain, withstand th' o'erwhelming burst?
It may not be!—Yet gaze once more around;
Whose headlong coursers strew th' ensanguin'd ground?
Who sink beneath the musket's steady fires?—
'Tis Albion conquers!—'tis the Gaul expires!
Fix'd as her rocks, not banded worlds could tear
Each moveless phalanx from the serried square.
Their foemen charge—they point the bayonet's rows—
Their comrades fall—their lessen'd files they close,
With stern composure, more tremendous far
Than all the angry turbulence of war.
Swift to their aid, with conquest's thrilling cry
Sweep o'er the field Britannia's Cavalry.
Like the Simoon they come;—the prostrate foe
Grasps in convulsive death the plain below.
Where yawns the quarry with abrupt abyss,[1]
Headlong they roll, down,—down the precipice.
In undistinguishable tumult bleed
The wounded soldier, and the mangled steed.
And urge, as swift, their fiery coursers on,
Where Havoc scents her prey o'er Mount St. John.
Can yon small bands, like lonely forts, dispers'd
O'er the wide plain, withstand th' o'erwhelming burst?
It may not be!—Yet gaze once more around;
Whose headlong coursers strew th' ensanguin'd ground?
Who sink beneath the musket's steady fires?—
'Tis Albion conquers!—'tis the Gaul expires!
Fix'd as her rocks, not banded worlds could tear
Each moveless phalanx from the serried square.
Their foemen charge—they point the bayonet's rows—
Their comrades fall—their lessen'd files they close,
With stern composure, more tremendous far
Than all the angry turbulence of war.
Swift to their aid, with conquest's thrilling cry
Sweep o'er the field Britannia's Cavalry.
Like the Simoon they come;—the prostrate foe
Grasps in convulsive death the plain below.
Where yawns the quarry with abrupt abyss,[1]
Headlong they roll, down,—down the precipice.
In undistinguishable tumult bleed
The wounded soldier, and the mangled steed.
- ↑ A tremendous slaughter took place, in the manner described, where some stone quarries had been opened on the plain.