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Anonymous translation
THEY breathe no longer: let their ashes rest! | |
| Clamor unjust and calumny | |
| They stooped not to confute; but flung their breast | |
| Against the legions of your enemy, | |
| And thus avenged themselves: for you they die. | 5 |
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| Woe to you, woe! if those inhuman eyes | |
| Can spare no drops to mourn your country’s weal; | |
| Shrinking before your selfish miseries; | |
| Against the common sorrow hard as steel: | |
| Tremble! the hand of death upon you lies: | 10 |
| You may be forced yourselves to feel. | |
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| But no,—what son of France has spared his tears | |
| For her defenders, dying in their fame? | |
| Though kings return, desired through lengthening years, | |
| What old man’s cheek is tinged not with her shame? | 15 |
| What veteran, who their fortune’s treason hears, | |
| Feels not the quickening spark of his old youthful flame? | |
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| Great Heaven! what lessons mark that one day’s page! | |
| What ghastly figures that might crowd an age! | |
| How shall the historic Muse record the day, | 20 |
| Nor, starting, cast the trembling pen away? | |
| Hide from me, hide those soldiers overborne, | |
| Broken with toil, with death-bolts crushed and torn,— | |
| Those quivering limbs with dust defiled, | |
| And bloody corses upon corses piled; | 25 |
| Veil from mine eyes that monument | |
| Of nation against nation spent | |
| In struggling rage that pants for breath; | |
| Spare us the bands thou sparedst, Death! | |
| O Varus! where the warriors thou hast led? | 30 |
| Restore our Legions!—give us back the dead! | |
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| I see the broken squadrons reel; | |
| The steeds plunge wild with spurning heel; | |
| Our eagles trod in miry gore; | |
| The leopard standards swooping o’er; | 35 |
| The wounded on their slow cars dying; | |
| The rout disordered, wavering, flying; | |
| Tortured with struggles vain, the throng | |
| Sway, shock, and drag their shattered mass along, | |
| And leave behind their long array | 40 |
| Wrecks, corses, blood,—the footmarks of their way. | |
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| Through whirlwind smoke and flashing flame,— | |
| O grief! what sight appalls mine eye?— | |
| The sacred band, with generous shame, | |
| Sole ’gainst an army, pause,—to die! | 45 |
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| Struck with the rare devotion, ’t is in vain | |
| The foes at gaze their blades restrain, | |
| And, proud to conquer, hem them round; the cry | |
| Returns, “The guard surrender not!—they die!” | |
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| ’T is said, that, when in dust they saw them lie, | 50 |
| A reverend sorrow for their brave career | |
| Smote on the foe: they fixed the pensive eye, | |
| And first beheld them undisturbed with fear. | |
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| See, then, these heroes, long invincible, | |
| Whose threatening features still their conquerors brave; | 55 |
| Frozen in death, those eyes are terrible; | |
| Feats of the past their deep-scarred brows engrave: | |
| For these are they who bore Italia’s sun, | |
| Who, o’er Castilia’s mountain-barrier passed. | |
| The North beheld them o’er the rampart run, | 60 |
| Which frosts of ages round her Russia cast. | |
| All sank subdued before them, and the date | |
| Of combats owed this guerdon to their glory, | |
| Seldom to Franks denied,—to fall elate | |
| On some proud day that should survive in story. | 65 |
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| Let us no longer mourn them; for the palm | |
| Unwithering shades their features stern and calm: | |
| Franks! mourn we for ourselves,—our land’s disgrace,— | |
| The proud, mean passions that divide her race. | |
| What age so rank in treasons? to our blood | 70 |
| The love is alien of the common good; | |
| Friendship, no more unbosomed, hides her tears, | |
| And man shuns man, and each his fellow fears; | |
| Scared from her sanctuary, Faith shuddering flies | |
| The din of oaths, the vaunt of perjuries. | 75 |
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| O cursed delirium! jars deplored | |
| That yield our home-hearths to the stranger’s sword! | |
| Our faithless hands but draw the gleaming blade | |
| To wound the bosom which its point should aid. | |
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| The strangers raze our fenced walls; | 80 |
| The castle stoops, the city falls; | |
| Insulting foes their truce forget; | |
| The unsparing war-bolt thunders yet; | |
| Flames glare our ravaged hamlets o’er, | |
| And funerals darken every door; | 85 |
| Drained provinces their greedy prefects rue, | |
| Beneath the lilied or the triple hue; | |
| And Franks, disputing for the choice of power, | |
| Dethrone a banner, or proscribe a flower. | |
| France! to our fierce intolerance we owe | 90 |
| The ills that from these sad divisions flow; | |
| ’T is time the sacrifice were made to thee | |
| Of our suspicious pride, our civic enmity: | |
| Haste,—quench the torches of intestine war; | |
| Heaven points the lily as our army’s star; | 95 |
| Hoist, then, the banner of the white,—some tears | |
| May bathe the thrice-dyed flag which Austerlitz endears. | |
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| France! France! awake, with one indignant mind! | |
| With new-born hosts the throne’s dread precinct bind! | |
| Disarmed, divided, conquerors o’er us stand; | 100 |
| Present the olive, but the sword in hand. | |
| And thou, O people, flushed with our defeat, | |
| To whom the mourning of our land is sweet, | |
| Thou witness of the death-blow of our brave! | |
| Dream not that France is vanquished to a slave; | 105 |
| Gall not with pride the avengers yet to come: | |
| Heaven may remit the chastening of our doom; | |
| A new Germanicus may yet demand | |
| Those eagles wrested from our Varus’ hand. | |
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