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Rh Whose wreathed smoke involves their rushing lines,— The other but with quiver, and bare breast, And lion heart.—Ah!—the contending din, The shock,—the shout,—the revelry of war,— I cannot sing.—They ask a bolder lay,— A firmer hand.—There are, who can behold God's image marr'd,—and call it glorious strife. And godlike victory.—There are, who love The trumpet's clangour,—and the hoarse response Of the death groan.—I cannot strike the lyre That breathes of war.—It seems to me that death Doth his own work so mightily, that man Need aid him not.— Even in the time of peace, The dance of pleasure, and the bloom of health, He smites his victims oft enough, to sooth The hater of his kind.—The longest lease Which Earth's frail tenant holds, his fourscore years Of labour and of sorrow, are brief space To do the work of an Eternity.— And can it be that I have need to tell Who were the conquerors,—or whose bodies lay Strewn thick as autumn leaves upon the soil That gave them birth?—Dark was the flight of souls From that stain'd field,—for few would bow to bear The captive's yoke.—Yet on their haggard brows Who drank the cup of servitude, it seem'd Death sate in bitterness, more than on those Whose mangled forms beneath the courser's heel Writhed in brief agony.— But who is she, Of such majestic port,—whose proud eye seems