Thomas Hardy (1840–1928). Wessex Poems and Other Verses. 1898.
23. Leipzig
“O
A German said to be—
Why let your pipe die on your lap,
Your eyes blink absently?”—
Of my mother—her voice and mien
When she used to sing and pirouette,
And touse the tambourine
She told me ’twas the same
She’d heard from the trumpets, when the Allies
Her city overcame.
My mother of Leipzig; but he,
Long quartered here, fetched her at close of the wars,
And a Wessex lad reared me.
She’d tell, after trilling that air,
Of her youth, and the battles on Leipzig plain
And of all that was suffered there!…
Combined them to crush One,
And by numbers’ might, for in equal fight
He stood the matched of none.
And Blücher, prompt and prow,
And Jean the Crown-Prince Bernadotte:
Buonaparte was the foe.
From the North to the Middle Sea,
And he’d now sat down in the noble town
Of the King of Saxony.
Upon Leipzig’s lawns, leaf-strewn,
Where lately each fair avenue
Wrought shade for summer noon.
Through miles of marsh and slough,
Whereover a streak of whiteness swept—
The Bridge of Lindenau.
Gloomed over his shrunken power;
And without the walls the hemming host
Waxed denser every hour.
With his chiefs by the bivouac fire,
While the belt of flames from the enemy’s lines
Flared nigher him yet and nigher.
Told, ‘Ready!’ As they rose
Their flashes seemed his Judgment-Sign
For bleeding Europe’s woes.
Glowed still and steadily;
And the Three rejoiced, for they read in the sight
That the One disdained to flee.…
On next day morn at nine;
Such mad and mangling cannon-play
Had never torn human line.
Contracting like a gin;
As nearer marched the million feet
Of columns closing in.
The second by the Western way;
The nearing of the third on the North was heard;
—The French held all at bay.
Against the second stood Ney;
Marmont against the third gave the order-word:
—Thus raged it throughout the day.
Who met the dawn hopefully,
And were lotted their shares in a quarrel not theirs,
Dropt then in their agony.
O so-called Christian time!
When will men’s swords to ploughshares turn?
When come the promised prime?’…
Closed not as evening wore;
And the morrow’s armies, rear and van,
Still mustered more and more.
Were eyed in glittering lines,
And up from the vast a murmuring passed
As from a wood of pines.
By numbers!’ scoffèd He;
‘But give me a third of their strength, I’d fill
Half Hell with their soldiery!’
And again dumb night held reign,
Save that ever upspread from the dark death-bed
A miles-wide pant of pain.
Victor, and Augereau,
Bold Poniatowski, and Lauriston,
To stay their overthrow;
There comes a narrowing room
That pens him, body and limbs and breath,
To wait a hideous doom,
That held the town and towers
Through these dire nights, a creeping crush
Seemed inborne with the hours.
Did fitful Chance allow;
’Twas where the Pleiss’ and Elster run—
The Bridge of Lindenau.
The wasted French sank back,
Stretching long lines across the Flats
And on the bridge-way track;
And stones, and men, as though
Some rebel churchyard crew updrave
Their sepulchres from below.
Wrecked regiments reel therefrom;
And rank and file in masses plough
The sullen Elster-Strom.
Were fifties, hundreds, tens;
And every current rippled red
With Marshal’s blood and men’s.
And barely won the verge;
Bold Poniatowski plunged him in
Never to re-emerge.
Their Rhineward way pell-mell;
And thus did Leipzig City sound
An Empire’s passing bell;
Came Marshals, Princes, Kings;
And the town was theirs.… Ay, as simple maid,
My mother saw these things!
I recall her, and that far scene,
And her acting of how the Allies marched in,
And her touse of the tambourine!”