Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Russia: Vol. XX. 1876–79.
Passage of the Beresina
By Lydia Huntley Sigourney (1791–1865)O
Of Cossack lances hovers o’er the heights;
And hark!—the Russian thunder on the rear
Thins the retreating ranks.
The haggard French,
Like summoned spectres, facing toward their foes,
And goading on the lean and dying steeds
That totter ’neath their huge artillery,
Give desperate battle. Wrapt in volumed smoke
A dense and motley mass of hurried forms
Rush toward the Beresina. Soldiers mix
Undisciplined amid the feebler throng,
While from the rough ravines the rumbling cars
That bear the sick and wounded, with the spoils,
Torn rashly from red Moscow’s sea of flame,
Line the steep banks. Chilled with the endless shade
Of black pine-forests, where unslumbering winds
Make bitter music,—every heart is sick
For the warm breath of its far, native vales,
Vine-clad and beautiful. Pale, meagre hands
Stretched forth in eager misery, implore
Quick passage o’er the flood. But there it rolls,
’Neath its ice-curtain, horrible and hoarse,
A fatal barrier ’gainst its country’s foes.
The combat deepens. Lo! in one broad flash
The Russian sabre gleams, and the wild hoof
Treads out despairing life.
With maniac haste
They throng the bridge, those fugitives of France,
Reckless of all, save that last, desperate chance,—
Rush, struggle, strive, the powerful thrust the weak,
And crush the dying.
Hark! a thundering crash,
A cry of horror! Down the broken bridge
Sinks, and the wretched multitude plunge deep
’Neath the devouring tide. That piercing shriek
With which they took their farewell of the sky,
Did haunt the living, as some doleful ghost
Troubleth the fever-dream. Some for a while,
With ice and death contending, sink and rise,
While some in wilder agony essay
To hold their footing on that tossing mass
Of miserable life, making their path
O’er palpitating bosoms. ’T is in vain!
The keen pang passes and the satiate flood
Shuts silent o’er its prey.
The severed host
Stand gazing on each shore. The gulf,—the dead
Forbid their union. One sad throng is warned
To Russia’s dungeons, one with shivering haste
Spread o’er the wild, through toil and pain to hew
Their many roads to death. From desert plains,
From sacked and solitary villages
Gaunt Famine springs to seize them; Winter’s wrath,
Unresting day or night, with blast and storm,
And one eternal magazine of frost,
Smites the astonished victims.
God of Heaven!
Warrest thou with France, that thus thine elements
Do fight against her sons? Yet on they press,
Stern, rigid, silent,—every bosom steeled
By the strong might of its own misery
Against all sympathy of kindred ties.
The brother on his fainting brother treads;
Friend tears from friend the garment and the bread,—
That last, scant morsel, which his quivering lip
Hoards in its death-pang. Round the midnight fires,
That fiercely through the startled forest blaze,
The dreaming shadows gather, madly pleased
To bask and scorch and perish,—with their limbs
Crisped like the martyr’s, and their heads fast sealed
To the frost-pillow of their fearful rest.
Turn back, turn back, thou fur-clad emperor,
Thus toward the palace of the Tuileries
Flying with breathless speed. Yon meagre forms,
Yon breathing skeletons, with tattered robes,
And bare and bleeding feet, and matted locks,
Are these the high and haughty troops of France,
The buoyant conscripts, who from their blest homes
Went gayly at thy bidding? When the cry
Of weeping Love demands her cherished ones,
The nursed upon her breast,—the idol-gods
Of her deep worship,—wilt thou coldly point
The Beresina,—the drear hospital,
The frequent snow-mound on the unsheltered march,
Where the lost soldier sleeps!
O War! War! War!
Thou false baptized, who by thy vaunted name
Of glory stealest o’er the ear of man
To rive his bosom with thy thousand darts,
Disrobed of pomp and circumstance, stand forth,
And show thy written league with sin and death.
Yes, ere ambition’s heart is seared and sold
And desolated, bid him mark thine end
And count thy wages.
The proud victor’s plume,
The hero’s trophied fame, the warrior’s wreath
Of blood-dashed laurel,—what will these avail
The spirit parting from material things?
One slender leaflet from the tree of peace,
Borne, dove-like, o’er the waste and warring earth,
Is better passport at the gate of Heaven.