ON Vorska’s glittering waves | |
| The morning sunbeams play; | |
| Pultowa’s walls are throng’d | |
| With eager multitudes; | |
| Athwart the dusty vale | 5 |
| They strain their aching eyes, | |
| Where to the fight moves on | |
| The Conqueror Charles, the iron-hearted Swede. | |
| |
| Him Famine hath not tamed, | |
| The tamer of the brave; | 10 |
| Him Winter hath not quell’d; | |
| When man by man his veteran troops sunk down, | |
| Frozen to their endless sleep, | |
| He held undaunted on | |
| Him Pain hath not subdued; | 15 |
| What though he mounts not now | |
| The fiery steed of war? | |
| Borne on a litter to the field he goes. | |
| |
| Go, iron-hearted King! | |
| Full of thy former fame— | 20 |
| Think how the humbled Dane | |
| Crouch’d underneath thy sword; | |
| Think how the wretched Pole | |
| Resign’d his conquer’d crown; | |
| Go, iron-hearted King! | 25 |
| Let Narva’s glory swell thy haughty breast,— | |
| The death-day of thy glory, Charles, hath dawn’d! | |
| Proud Swede, the Sun hath risen | |
| That on thy shame shall set! | |
| |
| Now, Patkul, may thine injured spirit rest! | 30 |
| For over that relentless Swede | |
| Ruin hath raised his unrelenting arm; | |
| For ere the night descends, | |
| His veteran host destroyed, | |
| His laurels blasted to revive no more, | 35 |
| He flies before the Muscovite. | |
| |
| Impatiently that haughty heart must bear | |
| Long years of hope deceived; | |
| Long years of idleness | |
| That sleepless soul must brook. | 40 |
| Now, Patkul, may thine injured spirit rest! | |
| To him who suffers in an honest cause | |
| No death is ignominious; not on thee, | |
| But upon Charles, the cruel, the unjust, | |
| Not upon thee,—on him | 45 |
| The ineffaceable reproach is fix’d, | |
| The infamy abides. | |
| Now, Patkul, may thine injured spirit rest. | |
| |
