Page:Poems - Southey (1799) volume 1.djvu/84
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Dark Horror! bear me where the field of fightScatters contagion on the tainted gale,When to the Moon's faint beam,On many a carcase shine the dews of night,And a dead silence stills the valeSave when at times is heard the glutted Raven's scream.
Where some wreck'd army from the Conqueror's mightSpeed their disastrous flight,With thee fierce Genius! let me trace their way,And hear at times the deep heart-groanOf some poor sufferer left to die alone,His sore wounds smarting with the winds of night;And we will pause, where, on the wild,The [1]Mother to her frozen breast,On the heap'd snows reclining clasps her childAnd with him sleeps, chill'd to eternal rest!
- ↑ I extract the following picture of consummate horror from the notes to a poem written in twelve syllable verse upon the campaign of 1794 and 1795; it was during the retreat to Deventer. "We could not proceed a hundred