Page:Two Mock Epics (Hanuman and Tantum Religio), Lyrics, Post Meridian Verse, The Turret Captain's Toast and other Verses.pdf/97

 Had not, with more than human courage

And worthier Macedon than our age,

His peerless rearguard, young Achates,

Just saved the Anabaptist vates:

O’er the loud tumult sings the vat,

Three roundest of the foe lie flat.

The frighted crowds recoil a pace

Irresolute, a moment waver.

That moment’s grace, that ceded space,

Have turned the scales in Blasio’s favour.

Helvetia’s hero and her prophet

Are half-way down the street, and off it

Cut like two swallows kestrel-chivied.

Flap! through an arch obscure, and, livid

From throat to brow, each muscle straining,

Hurl themselves at the oaken graining

Of the huge cumbrous door, impassive

As faith to reason; cobwebbed, massive,

The scarp with grit, the hinge encumbered

With scaly rust, rebellious lumbered,

Dry, stiff and stark, through a small are

The panelled logs—then scraping grounded

Blocked by the shingle: nerves a-tingle,

Like caoutchouc balls the two saints bounded

Back through the gloom; then, blinded by their

Own sweat, with heads breast-high rebutted

’Gainst the derisive woodwork, either

To perish in the attempt or shut it.

At last it yielded, slow, resentful,

As if reluctant planks so orthodox

Should shield such reprobates, then went full

Tilt, crash! one valve ’gainst th’ other half,