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A deaf ear and that gracious pardon spurned;
Nor e’en, if all be true that history vouches,
Vouchsafed one brief response; the graceless Nero,
Only in speechless wrath, discharged his pouches,
Screened by the foliage, on the royal hero.
Ha! how the ape-king now his bile discharged,
How gnashed and scraped his teeth! his eyes enlarged!
And thus with rapid speech his troops exhorted:
“Now grasp your swords, my lads, now guns be ported;
In glorious war we’ll reap immortal honours,
Who fall in Culture’s sacred cause are martyrs:
To-day all Europe’s eyes are fixt upon us.
Then hurrah! forward, boys, and at the Tartars!”
As to some cliff, when wintry seas are spuming
Around a rock-girt isle, in fleecy vastness,
The waves roll on and charge the granite fastness,
Surge high and all is foaming, bubbling, booming,
So ’mid the roll of drums, the trumpets’ blaring,
The clash of arms, and still indignant swearing,
The ape hosts round the fated banyan rumble,
But weak of foot and ’neath their harness gasping,
They fall in heaps: the foot are all a-stumble,
Despairing horsemen chargers’ necks are clasping.
The ground is but one motley rough and tumble,
And from the dappled heap in which they stifle
Here peeps a boot and spur and there a rifle.
But “Onward!” roared the monarch undismayed,
And waved them forward with his glittering blade.
Like Durga’s self upon his steed he towered,
His face aflame with war, his two eyes glowered,
Waved round his brows his long dishevelled hair,
His gorgeous casque at once seemed everywhere;
