Classic Poem

LXXXI.

 But rushing from its clouds, a viewless grasp
 Seized the impostor in his car of flame,
 And cleft the crown, and tore the vesture's clasp,
 And show'd him as he was!—The nations came
 Around in laughter stern, and lofty shame,
 To see the tyrant bend his naked brow,
 Fawning for abject life,—the tiger tame—
 Dragging his chains,—the rabble's vagrant show,
Licking the dust before his first, last, noblest foe.

LXXXII.

 Was this the work of man? Eternal King,
 Thou hearer of the orphan's midnight cry!
 What tribute shall the ransom'd empires bring
 For that new life of life, for Liberty.
 Earth had been one wide dungeon but for thee,
 And man had lived in woe, in woe had died.
 In vain the mighty hills, the surging sea,
 Where could the victim from the oppressor hide,
When all her regions lay beneath one iron stride?

LXXXIII.

 The veil is rent above us. 'Twas a word
 Omnipotent, which check'd that final hour.
 It summon'd not the faithful warrior's sword;
 The world stood hush'd at its descending power.
 Then follow'd its fierce armies, cloud and shower,
 The hail that shot its arrows from on high.
 The blast that on the atheist host burn'd frore,
 The storm that roll'd like midnight on the sky,
To make the deadly sheet in which their limbs must lie.

LXXXIV.

 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?
 Like pamper'd 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.

LXXXV.

 Homeward by hundred thousands, column deep,
 Broad square, loose squadron, rolling like the flood
 When mighty torrents from their channels leap,
 Rush'd through the land the haughty multitude,
 Billow on endless billow; on through wood,
 O'er rugged hill, down sunless, marshy vale,
 The death-devoted moved, to clangor rude
 Of drum and horn and dissonant clash of mail,
Glancing disastrous light before that sun-beam pale.

LXXXVI.

 Again they reached thee, Borodino! still
 Upon the loaded soil the carnage lay,
 The human harvest, now stark, stiff and chill,
 Friend, foe, stretch'd 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,
 Still did the hoof and wheel their passage tear
Through cloven helms and arms, and corpses mould'ring drear.

LXXXVII.

 The field was as they left it; fosse and fort
 Steaming with slaughter still, but desolate,—
 The cannon flung dismantled by its porte;
 Each knew the mound, the black ravine whose strait
 Was won and lost, and throng'd 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;
But death was at their heels, they shudder'd and rush'd on.

LXXXVIII.

 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
 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.

LXXXIX.

 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
 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 day-light shows the unmeasur'd desert wan.

XC.

 Still on they sweep, as if their hurrying march
 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,
 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!