Which curl in curious wreaths-How soon the smoke 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! Hurra! and Allah! and-one moment moreThe Death-cry drowning in the battle's roar. A BATTLE SCENE. As rolls the river into ocean, In awful whiteness o'er the shore, That shines and shakes beneath the roar ; Reverberate along that vale, More suited to the shepherd's tale: Those arms that ne'er shall loose their hold: AN ASSAULT ON A CITY BY NIGHT. The night was dark, and the thick mist allowed And in the Danube's waters shone the same, Long booming of each peal on peal, o'ercame The ear far more than thunder; for Heaven's flashes Spare or smite rarely-Man's make millions ashes! The column ordered on the assault scarce passed Beyond the Russian batteries a few toises, When up the bristling Moslem rose at last, Answering the Christian thunders with like voices; Then one vast fire, air, earth, and stream embraced, Which rocked as 'twere beneath the mighty noises; While the whole rampart blazed like Ætna, when The restless Titan hickups in his den. And one enormous shout of "Allah!" rose In the same moment, loud as even the roar Of War's most mortal engines, to their foes A SCENE AFTER A BATTLE. 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 killed in bloody rest. Two villanous Cossacques pursued the child With flashing eyes and weapons: matched with The rudest brute that roams Siberia's wild Has feelings pure and polished as a gem, The bear is civilized, the wolf is mild: [them And whom for this at last must we condemn ? Their natures? or their sovereigns, who employ All arts to teach their subjects to destroy? Their sabres glittering o'er her little head, Whence her fair hair rose twining with affright, Her hidden face was plunged amidst the dead : When Juan caught a glimpse of this sad sight, I shall not say exactly what he said, 66 Because it might not solace ears polite ;" * Allah Hu! is properly the war cry of the Mussulmans, and they dwell long on the last syllable, which gives it a very wild and peculiar effect. But what he did, was to lay on their backs, One's hip he slashed, and split the other's shoulder, And she was chill as they, and on her face A slender streak of blood announced how near Her fate had been to that of all her race; For the same blow which laid her mother here Just at this moment, while their eyes were fixed With infant terrors, glared as from a trance, THE FATE OF BEAUTY. As rising on its purple wing Invites the young pursuer near, And leads him on from flower to flower With wounded wing, or bleeding breast, From rose to tulip as before? Or Beauty, blighted in an hour, Ne'er droop the wing o'er those that die, Except an erring sister's shame. BLUES AND AMATEUR AUTHORS. They cannot read, and so don't lisp in criticism; Nor write, and so they don't affect the muse; |