James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902.
June 27The Battle of Pultowa
By Robert Southey (1774–1843)
O
The morning sunbeams play;
Pultowa’s walls are throng’d
With eager multitudes;
Athwart the dusty vale
They strain their aching eyes,
Where to the fight moves on
The Conqueror Charles, the iron-hearted Swede.
The tamer of the brave;
Him Winter hath not quell’d;
When man by man his veteran troops sunk down,
Frozen to their endless sleep,
He held undaunted on
Him Pain hath not subdued;
What though he mounts not now
The fiery steed of war?
Borne on a litter to the field he goes.
Full of thy former fame—
Think how the humbled Dane
Crouch’d underneath thy sword;
Think how the wretched Pole
Resign’d his conquer’d crown;
Go, iron-hearted King!
Let Narva’s glory swell thy haughty breast,—
The death-day of thy glory, Charles, hath dawn’d!
Proud Swede, the Sun hath risen
That on thy shame shall set!
For over that relentless Swede
Ruin hath raised his unrelenting arm;
For ere the night descends,
His veteran host destroyed,
His laurels blasted to revive no more,
He flies before the Muscovite.
Long years of hope deceived;
Long years of idleness
That sleepless soul must brook.
Now, Patkul, may thine injured spirit rest!
To him who suffers in an honest cause
No death is ignominious; not on thee,
But upon Charles, the cruel, the unjust,
Not upon thee,—on him
The ineffaceable reproach is fix’d,
The infamy abides.
Now, Patkul, may thine injured spirit rest.