Wessex Poems and Other Verses

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 inborne 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 bridge-way 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 touse 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!.. ’Twas an 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 crossed
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