The bayonet pierces and the sabre cleaves,

And human lives are lavished everywhere,

As the year closing whirls the scarlet leaves[IK]When the stripped forest bows to the bleak air,

And groans; and thus the peopled city grieves,

Shorn of its best and loveliest, and left bare;

But still it falls in vast and awful splinters,

As oaks blown down with all their thousand winters.