CXXVI. But still there is unto a patriot nation, Which loves so well its country and its king, A subject of sublimest exultation— Bear it, ye muses, on your brightest wing! Howe'er the mighty locust, desolation, Strip your green fields, and to your harvests cling, Gaunt famine never shall approach the throne— Though Ireland starve, great George weighs twenty stone. CXXVII. But let me put an end unto my theme: There was an end of Ismail-hapless town! Far flash'd her burning towers o'er Danube's stream, Of forty thousand who had manned the wall, CXXVIII. In one thing ne'ertheless 't is fit to praise And therefore worthy of commemoration: Perhaps the season's chill, and their long station CXXIX. Much did they slay, more plunder, and no less CXXX. Some odd mistakes too happen'd in the dark, Of light to save the venerably chaste:- CXXXI. But on the whole their continence was great; Of « single blessedness,» and thought it good, (Since it was not their fault, but only fate, To bear these crosses) for each waning prude To make a Roman sort of Sabine wedding, Without the expense and the suspense of bedding. CXXXII. Some voices of the buxom middle-aged CXXXIII. Suwarrow now was conqueror-a match While mosques and streets, beneath his eyes, like thatch With bloody hands he wrote his first dispatch; And here exactly follows what he said :— Glory to God and to the Empress!» (Powers Eternal! such names mingled!) CXXXIV. Ismail's ours!»9 Methinks these are the most tremendous words, CXXXV. He wrote this polar melody and set it, Duly accompanied by shrieks and groans, To rise against earth's tyrants. Never let it CXXXVI. That hour is not for us, but 't is for you, And as, in the great joy of your millennium, You hardly will believe such things were true As now occur, I thought that I would pen you 'em; But may their very memory perish too!— you 'em Yet if perchance remember'd, still disdain you CXXXVII. And when you hear historians talk of thrones, Or hieroglyphics on Egyptian stones, CXXXVIII. Reader! I have kept my word,—at least so far All very accurate, you must allow, And epic, if plain truth should prove no bar; For I have drawn much less with a long bow CXXXIX. With which I still can harp, and carp, and fiddle. What further bath befallen or may befal The hero of this grand poetic riddle, I by and bye may tell you, if at all: But now I choose to break off in the middle, Worn out with battering Ismail's stubborn wall, While Juan is sent off with the dispatch, For which all Petersburgh is on the watch. CXL. This special honour was conferred, because His little captive gained him some applause, |