Don Juan 08-071 ~ 075


Don Juan 08-071
Canto the Eighth
 
     LXXI
For having thrown himself into a ditch,
    Follow'd in haste by various grenadiers,
Whose blood the puddle greatly did enrich,
    He climb'd to where the parapet appears;
But there his project reach'd its utmost pitch
    ('Mongst other deaths the General Ribaupierre's
Was much regretted), for the Moslem men
Threw them all down into the ditch again.

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Don Juan 08-072
Canto the Eighth
 
     LXXII
And had it not been for some stray troops landing
    They knew not where, being carried by the stream
To some spot, where they lost their understanding,
    And wander'd up and down as in a dream,
Until they reach'd, as daybreak was expanding,
    That which a portal to their eyes did seem, --
The great and gay Koutousow might have lain
Where three parts of his column yet remain.

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Don Juan 08-073
Canto the Eighth
 
     LXXIII
And scrambling round the rampart, these same troops,
    After the taking of the "Cavalier,"
Just as Koutousow's most "forlorn" of "hopes"
    Took like chameleons some slight tinge of fear,
Open'd the gate call'd "Kilia," to the groups
    Of baffled heroes, who stood shyly near,
Sliding knee-deep in lately frozen mud,
Now thaw'd into a marsh of human blood.

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Don Juan 08-074
Canto the Eighth
 
     LXXIV
The Kozacks, or, if so you please, Cossacques
    (I don't much pique myself upon orthography,
So that I do not grossly err in facts,
    Statistics, tactics, politics, and geography) --
Having been used to serve on horses' backs,
    And no great dilettanti in topography
Of fortresses, but fighting where it pleases
Their chiefs to order, -- were all cut to pieces.

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Don Juan 08-075
Canto the Eighth
 
     LXXV
Their column, though the Turkish batteries thunder'd
     Upon them, ne'ertheless had reach'd the rampart,
And naturally thought they could have plunder'd
     The city, without being farther hamper'd;
But as it happens to brave men, they blunder'd --
     The Turks at first pretended to have scamper'd,
Only to draw them 'twixt two bastion corners,
From whence they sallied on those Christian scorners.

George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron (1788-1824) 
ByronLong
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