to foot:
Nothing there, save Death, was mute;[385]
Stroke, and thrust, and flash, and cry
For quarter, or for victory,
Mingle there with the volleying thunder,
Which makes the distant cities wonder
How the sounding battle goes,
If with them, or for their foes;
If they must mourn, or may rejoice
In that annihilating voice, 760
Which pierces the deep hills through and through
With an echo dread and new:
You might have heard it, on that day,
O'er Salamis and Megara;
(We have heard the hearers say,)[qf]
Even unto Piraeus' bay.

XXV.

From the point of encountering blades to the hilt,
Sabres and swords with blood were gilt;[386]
But the rampart is won, and the spoil begun,
And all but the after carnage done. 770
Shriller shrieks now mingling come
From within the plundered dome:
Hark to the haste of flying feet,
That splash in the blood of the slippery street;
But here and there, where 'vantage ground
Against the foe may still be found,
Desperate groups, of twelve or ten,
Make a pause, and turn again--
With banded backs against the wall,
Fiercely stand, or fighting fall. 780
There stood an old man[387]--his hairs were white,
But his veteran arm was full of might:
So gallantly bore he the brunt of the fray,
The dead before him, on that day,
In a semicircle lay;
Still he combated unwounded,
Though retreating, unsurrounded.
Many a scar of former fight
Lurked[388] beneath his corslet bright;
But of every wound his body bore, 790
Each and all had been ta'en before:
Though aged, he was so iron of limb,
Few of our youth could cope with him,
And the foes, whom he singly kept at bay,
Outnumbered his thin hairs[389] of silver grey.
From right to left his sabre swept:
Many an Othman mother wept
Sons that were unborn, when dipped[390]
His weapon first in Moslem gore,
Ere his years could count a score. 800
Of all he might have been the sire[391]
Who fell that day beneath his ire:
For, sonless left long years ago,
His wrath made many a childless foe;
And since the day, when in the strait[392]
His only boy had met