Page:Songs from the Southern Seas and Other Poems (1873).djvu/228

224 Then aimed at him who held the flag a cut of crushing might, And split him to the very chin!—a horrid, ghastly sight! He seized the standard from his hand; but now the Frenchmen close. And that stout soldier, all alone, fights with a hundred foes! They cut and cursed,—a dozen swords were whistling round his head; He could not guard on every side,— from fifty wounds he bled. His sabre crashed through helm and blade, as though it were a mace; He cut their steel cuirasses and he slashed them o'er the face. One tall dragoon closed on him, but he wheeled his horse around. And cloven through the helmet went the trooper to the ground. But his sabre blade was broken by the fury of the blow.