Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE BATTLE OF MONTENOTTE, by JOHN RUSKIN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE BATTLE OF MONTENOTTE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Slow lifts the night her starry host
Last Line: Within the peaceful evening-shade.
Subject(s): Montenotte, Battle Of (1796); Napoleonic Wars


I.

SLOW lifts the night her starry host
Above the mountain chain
That guards the grey Ligurian coast,
And lights the Lombard plain;
That plain, that softening on the sight
Lies blue beneath the balm of night,
With lapse of rivers lulled, that glide
In lustre broad of living tide,
Or pause for hours of peace beside
The shores they double, and divide,
To feed with heaven's reverted hue
The clustered vine's expanding blue:
With crystal flow, for evermore,
They lave a blood-polluted shore;
Ah! not the snows, whose wreaths renew
Their radiant depth with stainless dew,
Can bid their banks be pure, or bless
The guilty land with holiness.

II.

In stormy waves, whose wrath can reach
The rocks that back the topmost beach,
The midnight sea falls wild and deep
Around Savona's marble steep,
And Voltri's crescent bay.
What fiery lines are these, that flash
Where fierce the breakers curl and crash,
And fastest flies the spray?
No moon has risen to mark the night,
Nor such the flakes of phosphor light
That wake along the southern wave,
By Baiæ's cliff and Capri's cave,
Until the dawn of day:
The phosphor flame is soft and green
Beneath the hollow surges seen;
But these are dyed with dusky red
Far on the fitful surface shed;
And evermore, their glance between,
The mountain gust is deeply stirred
With low vibration, felt, and heard,
Which winds and leaves confuse, in vain,
It gathers through their maze again,
Redoubling round the rocks it smote,
Till falls in fear the night-bird's note,
And every sound beside is still,
But plash of torrent from the hill,
And murmur by the branches made
That bend above its bright cascade.

III.

Hark, hark! the hollow Apennine
Laughs in his heart afar;
Through all his vales he drinks like wine
The deepening draught of war;
For not with doubtful burst, or slow,
That thunder shakes his breathless snow,
But ceaseless rends, with rattling stroke,
The veils of white volcano-smoke
That o'er Legino's ridges rest,
And writhe in Merla's vale:
There lifts the Frank his triple crest,
Crowned with its plumage pale,
Though, clogged and dyed with stains of death,
It scarce obeys the tempest's breath,
And darker still, and deadlier press
The war-clouds on its weariness.
Far by the bright Bormida's banks
The Austrian cheers his chosen ranks,
In ponderous waves, that, where they check
Rise o'er their own tumultuous wreck,
Recoiling—crashing—gathering still
In rage around that Island hill,
Where stand the moveless Few—
Few—fewer as the moments flit;
Though shaft and shell their columns split
As morning melts the dew,
Though narrower yet their guarding grows,
And hot the heaps of carnage close,
In death's faint shade and fiery shock,
They stand, one ridge of living rock,
Which steel may rend, and wave may wear,
And bolt may crush, and blast may tear,
But none can strike from its abiding.
The flood, the flash, the steel, may bear
Perchance destruction—not despair,
And death—but not dividing.
What matter? while their ground they keep,
Though here a column—there an heap—
Though these in wrath—and those in sleep,
If all are there.

IV.

Charge, D'Argenteau! Fast flies the night,
The snows look wan with inward light:
Charge, D'Argenteau! Thy kingdom's power
Wins not again this hope, nor hour:
The force—the fate of France is thrown
Behind those feeble shields,
That ridge of death-defended stone
Were worth a thousand fields!
In vain—in vain! Thy broad array
Breaks on their front of spears like spray
Thine hour hath struck—the dawning red
Is o'er thy wavering standards shed;
A darker dye thy folds shall take
Before its utmost beams can break.

V.

Out of its Eastern fountains
The river of day is drawn,
And the shadows of the mountains
March downward from the dawn,—
The shadows of the ancient hills
Shortening as they go,
Down beside the dancing rills
Wearily and slow.
The morning wind the mead hath kissed;
It leads in narrow lines
The shadows of the silver mist,
To pause among the pines.
But where the sun is calm and hot,
And where the wind hath peace,
There is a shade that pauseth not,
And a sound that doth not cease.
The shade is like a sable river
Broken with sparkles bright;
The sound is like dead leaves that shiver
In the decay of night.

VI.

Together came with pulse-like beat
The darkness, and the tread;
A motion calm—a murmur sweet,
Yet deathful both, and dread;
Poised on the hill, a fringèd shroud,
It wavered like the sea,
Then clove itself, as doth a cloud,
In sable columns three.
They fired no shot—they gave no sign,—
They blew no battle peal,
But down they came, in deadly line,
Like whirling bars of steel.
As fades the forest from its place,
Beneath the lava flood,
The Austrian host, before their face,
Was melted into blood:
They moved, as moves the solemn night,
With lulling, and release,
Before them, all was fear and flight,
Behind them, all was peace:
Before them flashed the roaring glen
With bayonet and brand;
Behind them lay the wrecks of men,
Like sea-weed on the sand.

VII.

But still, along the cumbered heath,
A vision strange and fair
Did fill the eyes that failed in death,
And darkened in despair;
Where blazed the battle wild and hot
A youth, deep-eyed and pale,
Did move amidst the storm of shot,
As the fire of God through hail,
He moved, serene as spirits are,
And dying eyes might see
Above his head a crimson star
Burning continually.

VIII.

With bended head, and breathless tread,
The traveller tracks that silent shore,
Oppressed with thoughts that seek the dead,
And visions that restore,
Or lightly trims his pausing bark,
Where lies the ocean lulled and dark,
Beneath the marble mounds that stay
The strength of many a bending bay,
And lace with silver lines the flow
Of tideless waters to and fro,
As drifts the breeze, or dies.
That scarce recalls its lightness, left
In many a purple-curtained cleft,
Whence to the softly lighted skies
Low flowers lift up their dark blue eyes,
To bring by fits the deep perfume
Alternate, as the bending bloom
Diffuses or denies.
Above, the slopes of mountain shine,
Where glows the citron, glides the vine,
And breathes the myrtle wildly bright,
And aloes lift their lamps of light,
And ceaseless sunbeams clothe the calm
Of orbèd pine and vaulted palm,
Dark trees, that sacred order keep,
And rise in temples o'er the steep—
Eternal shrines, whose columned shade
Though winds may shake, and frosts may fade,
And dateless years subdue,
Is softly builded, ever new,
By angel hands, and wears the dread
And stillness of a sacred place,
A sadness of celestial grace,
A shadow, God-inhabited.

IX.

And all is peace, around, above,
The air all balm—the light all love,
Enduring love, that burns and broods
Serenely o'er these solitudes,
Or pours at intervals a part
Of Heaven upon the wanderer's heart,
Whose subject soul and quiet thought
Are open to be touched or taught,
By mute address of bud and beam
Of purple peak and silver stream—
By sounds that fall at nature's choice,
And things whose being is their voice,
Innumerable tongues that teach
The will and ways of God to men,
In waves that beat the lonely beach,
And winds that haunt the homeless glen,
Where they, who ruled the rushing deep,
The restless and the brave,
Have left along their native steep
The ruin, and the grave.

X.

And he who gazes while the day
Departs along the boundless bay,
May find against its fading streak
The shadow of a single peak,
Seen only when the surges smile,
And all the heaven is clear,
That sad and solitary isle.
Where, captive, from his red career,
He sank—who shook the hemisphere,
Then, turning from the hollow sea,
May trace, across the crimsoned height
That saw his earliest victory,
The purple rainbow's resting light,
And the last lines of storm that fade
Within the peaceful evening-shade.





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