He said,- and in the kindest Calmuck tone,-'Why, Johnson, what the devil do you mean By bringing women here? They shall be shown All the attention possible, and seen In safety to the waggons, where alone In fact they can be safe. You should have been Aware this kind of baggage never thrives:
Save wed a year, I hate recruits with wives.'
'May it please your excellency,' thus replied Our British friend, 'these are the wives of others, And not our own. I am too qualified By service with my military brothers To break the rules by bringing one's own bride Into a camp: I know that nought so bothers The hearts of the heroic on a charge, As leaving a small family at large.
'But these are but two Turkish ladies, who With their attendant aided our escape, And afterwards accompanied us through A thousand perils in this dubious shape.
To me this kind of life is not so new;
To them, poor things, it is an awkward scrape.
I therefore, if you wish me to fight freely, Request that they may both be used genteelly.'
Meantime these two poor girls, with swimming eyes, Look'd on as if in doubt if they could trust Their own protectors; nor was their surprise Less than their grief (and truly not less just)
To see an old man, rather wild than wise In aspect, plainly clad, besmear'd with dust, Stript to his waistcoat, and that not too clean, More fear'd than all the sultans ever seen.
For every thing seem'd resting on his nod, As they could read in all eyes. Now to them, Who were accustom'd, as a sort of god, To see the sultan, rich in many a gem, Like an imperial peacock stalk abroad (That royal bird, whose tail 's a diadem), With all the pomp of power, it was a doubt How power could condescend to do without.
John Johnson, seeing their extreme dismay, Though little versed in feelings oriental, Suggested some slight comfort in his way:
Don Juan, who was much more sentimental, Swore they should see him by the dawn of day, Or that the Russian army should repent all:
And, strange to say, they found some consolation In this- for females like exaggeration.
And then with tears, and sighs, and some slight kisses, They parted for the present- these to await, According to the artillery's hits or misses, What sages call Chance, Providence, or Fate (Uncertainty is one of many blisses, A mortgage on Humanity's estate)-While their beloved friends began to arm, To burn a town which never did them harm.
Suwarrow,- who but saw things in the gross, Being much too gross to see them in detail, Who calculated life as so much dross, And as the wind a widow'd nation's wail, And cared as little for his army's loss (So that their efforts should at length prevail)
As wife and friends did for the boils of job,-What was 't to him to hear two women sob?
Nothing.- The work of glory still went on In preparations for a cannonade As terrible as that of Ilion, If Homer had found mortars ready made;
But now, instead of slaying Priam's son, We only can but talk of escalade, Bombs, drums, guns, bastions, batteries, bayonets, bullets,-Hard words, which stick in the soft Muses' gullets.