I can be strong.«

 

Three hours past Curfew, when the Froom's mild hiss

Reigned sole, undulled by whirr of merchandize,

From Pummery-Tout to where the Gibbet is,

 

I crossed my pleasaunce hard by Glyd'path Rise,

And stood beneath the wall. Eleven strokes went,

And to the door they came, contrariwise,

 

And met in clasp so close I had but bent

My lifted blade on either to have let

Their two souls loose upon the firmament.

 

But something held my arm. »A moment yet

As pray-time ere you wantons die!« I said;

And then they saw me. Swift her gaze was set

 

With eye and cry of love illimited

Upon her Heart-king. Never upon me

Had she thrown look of love so thoroughsped! ...

 

At once she flung her faint form shieldingly

On his, against the vengeance of my vows;

The which o'erruling, her shape shielded he.

 

Blanked by such love, I stood as in a drowse,

And the slow moon edged from the upland nigh,

My sad thoughts moving thuswise: »I may house

 

And I may husband her, yet what am I

But licensed tyrant to this bonded pair?

Says Charity, Do as ye would be done by.« ...

 

Hurling my iron to the bushes there,

I bade them stay. And, as if brain and breast

Were passive, they walked with me to the stair.

 

Inside the house none watched; and on we prest

Before a mirror, in whose gleam I read

Her beauty, his, – and mine own mien unblest;

 

Till at her room I turned. »Madam,« I said,

»Have you the wherewithal for this? Pray speak.

Love fills no cupboard. You'll need daily bread.«

 

»We've nothing, sire,« she lipped; »and nothing seek.

'Twere base in me to rob my lord unware;

Our hands will earn a pittance week by week.«

 

And next I saw she had piled her raiment rare

Within the garde-robes, and her household purse,

Her jewels, her least lace of personal wear;

 

And stood in homespun. Now grown wholly hers,

I handed her the gold, her jewels all,

And him the choicest of her robes diverse.

 

»I'll take you to the doorway in the wall,

And then adieu,« I told them. »Friends, withdraw.«

They did so; and she went – beyond recall.

 

And as I paused beneath the arch I saw

Their moonlit figures – slow, as in surprise –

Descend the slope, and vanish on the haw.

 

»›Fool,‹ some will say,« I thought. – »But who is wise,

Save God alone, to weigh my reasons why?«

– »Hast thou struck home?« came with the boughs' night-sighs.

 

It was my friend. »I have struck well. They fly,

But carry wounds that none can cicatrize.«

– »Not mortal?« said he. »Lingering – worse,« said I.

 

Leipzig

(1813)

Scene. – The Master-tradesmen's Parlour at the Old Ship Inn, Casterbridge. Evening.

 

»Old Norbert with the flat blue cap –

A German said to be –

Why let your pipe die on your lap,

Your eyes blink absently?«

 

– »Ah! ... Well, I had thought till my cheek was wet

Of my mother – her voice and mien

When she used to sing and pirouette,

And tap the tambourine

 

To the march that yon street-fiddler plies:

She told me 'twas the same

She'd heard from the trumpets, when the Allies

Burst on her home like flame.

 

My father was one of the German Hussars,

My mother of Leipzig; but he,

Being quartered here, fetched her at close of the wars,

And a Wessex lad reared me.

 

And as I grew up, again and again

She'd tell, after trilling that air,

Of her youth, and the battles on Leipzig plain

And of all that was suffered there! ...

 

– 'Twas a time of alarms. Three Chiefs-at-arms

Combined them to crush One,

And by numbers' might, for in equal fight

He stood the matched of none.

 

Carl Schwarzenberg was of the plot,

And Blücher, prompt and prow,

And Jean the Crown-Prince Bernadotte:

Buonaparte was the foe.

 

City and plain had felt his reign

From the North to the Middle Sea,

And he'd now sat down in the noble town

Of the King of Saxony.

 

October's deep dew its wet gossamer threw

Upon Leipzig's lawns, leaf-strewn,

Where lately each fair avenue

Wrought shade for summer noon.

 

To westward two dull rivers crept

Through miles of marsh and slough,

Whereover a streak of whiteness swept –

The Bridge of Lindenau.

 

Hard by, in the City, the One, care-tossed,

Sat pondering his shrunken power;

And without the walls the hemming host

Waxed denser every hour.

 

He had speech that night on the morrow's designs

With his chiefs by the bivouac fire,

While the belt of flames from the enemy's lines

Flared nigher him yet and nigher.

 

Three rockets then from the girdling trine

Told, ›Ready!‹ As they rose

Their flashes seemed his Judgment-Sign

For bleeding Europe's woes.

 

Twas seen how the French watch-fires that night

Glowed still and steadily;

And the Three rejoiced, for they read in the sight

That the One disdained to flee. ...

 

– Five hundred guns began the affray

On next day morn at nine;

Such mad and mangling cannon-play

Had never torn human line.

 

Around the town three battles beat,

Contracting like a gin;

As nearer marched the million feet

Of columns closing in.

 

The first battle nighed on the low Southern side;

The second by the Western way;

The nearing of the third on the North was heard;

– The French held all at bay.

 

Against the first band did the Emperor stand;

Against the second stood Ney;

Marmont against the third gave the order-word:

– Thus raged it throughout the day.

 

Fifty thousand sturdy souls on those trampled plains and knolls,

Who met the dawn hopefully,

And were lotted their shares in a quarrel not theirs,

Dropt then in their agony.

 

›O,‹ the old folks said, ›ye Preachers stern!

O so-called Christian time!

When will men's swords to ploughshares turn?

When come the promised prime?‹ ...

 

– The clash of horse and man which that day began,

Closed not as evening wore;

And the morrow's armies, rear and van,

Still mustered more and more.

 

From the City towers the Confederate Powers

Were eyed in glittering lines,

And up from the vast a murmuring passed

As from a wood of pines.

 

›'Tis well to cover a feeble skill

By numbers' might!‹ scoffed He;

›But give me a third of their strength, I'd fill

Half Hell with their soldiery!‹

 

All that day raged the war they waged,

And again dumb night held reign,

Save that ever upspread from the dank deathbed

A miles-wide pant of pain.

 

Hard had striven brave Ney, the true Bertrand,

Victor, and Augereau,

Bold Poniatowski, and Lauriston,

To stay their overthrow;

 

But, as in the dream of one sick to death

There comes a narrowing room

That pens him, body and limbs and breath,

To wait a hideous doom,

 

So to Napoleon, in the hush

That held the town and towers

Through these dire nights, a creeping crush

Seemed borne in with the hours.

 

One road to the rearward, and but one,

Did fitful Chance allow;

'Twas where the Pleiss' and Elster run –

The Bridge of Lindenau.

 

The nineteenth dawned. Down street and Platz

The wasted French sank back,

Stretching long lines across the Flats

And on the bridgeway track:

 

When there surged on the sky an earthen wave,

And stones, and men, as though

Some rebel churchyard crew updrave

Their sepulchres from below.

 

To Heaven is blown Bridge Lindenau;

Wrecked regiments reel therefrom;

And rank and file in masses plough

The sullen Elster-Strom.

 

A gulf was Lindenau; and dead

Were fifties, hundreds, tens;

And every current rippled red

With Marshal's blood and men's.

 

The smart Macdonald swam therein,

And barely won the verge;

Bold Poniatowski plunged him in

Never to re-emerge.

 

Then stayed the strife. The remnants wound

Their Rhineward way pell-mell;

And thus did Leipzig City sound

An Empire's passing bell;

 

While in cavalcade, with band and blade,

Came Marshals, Princes, Kings;

And the town was theirs. ... Ay, as simple maid,

My mother saw these things!

 

And whenever those notes in the street begin,

I recall her, and that far scene,

And her acting of how the Allies marched in,

And her tap of the tambourine!«

 

The Peasant's Confession

»Si le maréchal Grouchy avait été rejoint par l'officier que Napoléon lui avait expédié la veille à dix heures du soir, toute question eût disparu. Mais cet officier n'était point parvenu à sa destination, ainsi que le maréchal n'a cessé de l'affirmer toute sa vie, et il faut l'en croire, car autrement il n'aurait eu aucune raison pour hésiter. Cet officier avait-il été pris? avait-il passé à l'ennemi? c'est ce qu'on a toujours ignoré.« –

THIERS, Histoire de l'Empire. »Waterloo«.

 

Good Father! ... It was eve in middle June,

And war was waged anew

By great Napoleon, who for years had strewn

Men's bones all Europe through.

 

Three nights ere this, with columned corps he'd cross'd

The Sambre at Charleroi,

To move on Brussels, where the English host

Dallied in Parc and Bois.

 

The yestertide we'd heard the gloomy gun

Growl through the long-sunned day

From Quatre-Bras and Ligny; till the dun

Twilight suppressed the fray;

 

Albeit therein – as lated tongues bespoke –

Brunswick's high heart was drained,

And Prussia's Line and Landwehr, though unbroke,

Stood cornered and constrained.

 

And at next noon-time Grouchy slowly passed

With thirty thousand men:

We hoped thenceforth no army, small or vast,

Would trouble us again.

 

My hut lay deeply in a vale recessed,

And never a soul seemed nigh

When, reassured at length, we went to rest –

My children, wife, and I.

 

But what was this that broke our humble ease?

What noise, above the rain,

Above the dripping of the poplar trees

That smote along the pane?

 

– A call of mastery, bidding me arise,

Compelled me to the door,

At which a horseman stood in martial guise –

Splashed – sweating from every pore.

 

Had I seen Grouchy? Yes? What track took he?

Could I lead thither on? –

Fulfilment would ensure much gold for me,

Perhaps more gifts anon.

 

»I bear the Emperor's mandate,« then he said,

»Charging the Marshal straight

To strike between the double host ahead

Ere they co-operate,

 

Engaging Blücher till the Emperor put

Lord Wellington to flight,

And next the Prussians. This to set afoot

Is my emprise to-night.«

 

I joined him in the mist; but, pausing, sought

To estimate his say.

Grouchy had made for Wavre; and yet, on thought,

I did not lead that way.

 

I mused: »If Grouchy thus and thus be told,

The clash comes sheer hereon;

My farm is stript. While, as for gifts of gold,

Money the French have none.

 

Grouchy unwarned, moreo'er, the English win,

And mine is left to me –

They buy, not borrow.« – Hence did I begin

To lead him treacherously.

 

And as we edged Joidoigne with cautious view

Dawn pierced the humid air;

And still I easted with him, though I knew

Never marched Grouchy there.

 

Near Ottignies we passed, across the Dyle

(Lim'lette left far aside),

And thence direct toward Pervez and Noville

Through green grain, till he cried:

 

»I doubt thy conduct, man! no track is here –

I doubt thy gagèd word!«

Thereat he scowled on me, and prancing near,

He pricked me with his sword.

 

»Nay, Captain, hold! We skirt, not trace the course

Of Grouchy,« said I then:

»As we go, yonder went he, with his force

Of thirty thousand men.«

 

– At length noon nighed; when west, from Saint-John's-Mound,

A hoarse artillery boomed,

And from Saint-Lambert's upland, chapel-crowned,

The Prussian squadrons loomed.

 

Then leaping to the wet wild path we had kept,

»My mission fails!« he cried;

»Too late for Grouchy now to intercept,

For, peasant, you have lied!«

 

He turned to pistol me. I sprang, and drew

The sabre from his flank,

And 'twixt his nape and shoulder, ere he knew,

I struck, and dead he sank.

 

I hid him deep in nodding rye and oat –

His shroud green stalks and loam;

His requiem the corn-blade's husky note –

And then I hastened home.