From the point of encountering blades to the hilt,

Sabres and swords with blood were gilt;[386]

But the rampart is won, and the spoil begun,

And all but the after carnage done. 770

Shriller shrieks now mingling come

From within the plundered dome:

Hark to the haste of flying feet,

That splash in the blood of the slippery street;

But here and there, where 'vantage ground

Against the foe may still be found,

Desperate groups, of twelve or ten,

Make a pause, and turn again—

With banded backs against the wall,

Fiercely stand, or fighting fall. 780

There stood an old man[387]—his hairs were white,

But his veteran arm was full of might:

So gallantly bore he the brunt of the fray,

The dead before him, on that day,

In a semicircle lay;

Still he combated unwounded,

Though retreating, unsurrounded.

Many a scar of former fight

Lurked[388] beneath his corslet bright;

But of every wound his body bore, 790

Each and all had been ta'en before:

Though agéd, he was so iron of limb,

Few of our youth could cope with him,

And the foes, whom he singly kept at bay,

Outnumbered his thin hairs[389] of silver grey.

From right to left his sabre swept:

Many an Othman mother wept

Sons that were unborn, when dipped[390]

His weapon first in Moslem gore,

Ere his years could count a score. 800

Of all he might have been the sire[391]

Who fell that day beneath his ire:

For, sonless left long years ago,

His wrath made many a childless foe;

And since the day, when in the strait[392]

His only boy had met his fate,

His parent's iron hand did doom

More than a human hecatomb.[393]

If shades by carnage be appeased,

Patroclus' spirit less was pleased 810

Than his, Minotti's son, who died

Where Asia's bounds and ours divide.

Buried he lay, where thousands before

For thousands of years were inhumed on the shore;

What of them is left, to tell

Where they lie, and how they fell?

Not a stone on their turf, nor a bone in their graves;

But they live in the verse that immortally saves.[394]