Had never torn human line.

“Around the town three battles beat,
   Contracting like a gin;
As nearer marched the million feet
   Of columns closing in.

“The first battle nighed on the low Southern side;
   The second by the Western way;
The nearing of the third on the North was heard:
   —The French held all at bay.

“Against the first band did the Emperor stand;
   Against the second stood Ney;
Marmont against the third gave the order-word:
   —Thus raged it throughout the day.

“Fifty thousand sturdy souls on those trampled plains and knolls,
   Who met the dawn hopefully,
And were lotted their shares in a quarrel not theirs,
   Dropt then in their agony.

“‘O,’ the old folks said, ‘ye Preachers stern!
   O so-called Christian time!
When will men’s swords to ploughshares turn?
   When come the promised prime?’ . . .

“—The clash of horse and man which that day began,
   Closed not as evening wore;
And the morrow’s armies, rear and van,
   Still mustered more and more.

“From the City towers the Confederate Powers
   Were eyed in glittering lines,
And up from the vast a murmuring passed
   As from a wood of pines.

“‘’Tis well to cover a feeble skill
   By numbers!’ scoffèd He;
‘But give me a third of their strength, I’d fill
   Half Hell with their soldiery!’

“All that day raged the war they waged,
   And again dumb night held reign,
Save that ever upspread from the dark deathbed
   A miles-wide pant of pain.

“Hard had striven brave Ney, the true Bertrand,
   Victor, and Augereau,
Bold Poniatowski, and Lauriston,
   To stay their overthrow;

“But, as in the dream of one sick to death
   There comes a narrowing room
That pens him, body and limbs and breath,
   To wait a hideous doom,

“So to Napoleon, in the hush
   That held the town and towers
Through these dire nights, a creeping crush
   Seemed inborne with the hours.

“One road to the rearward, and but one,
   Did fitful Chance allow;
’Twas where the Pleiss’ and Elster run—
   The Bridge of Lindenau.

“The nineteenth dawned.  Down street and Platz
   The wasted French sank back,
Stretching long lines across the Flats
   And on the bridge-way track;

“When there surged on the sky an earthen wave,
   And stones, and men, as though
Some rebel churchyard crew updrave
   Their sepulchres from below.

“To Heaven is blown Bridge Lindenau;
   Wrecked regiments reel therefrom;
And rank and file in masses plough
   The sullen Elster-Strom.

“A gulf was Lindenau; and dead
   Were fifties, hundreds, tens;
And every current rippled red
   With Marshal’s blood and men’s.

“The smart Macdonald swam therein,
   And barely won the verge;
Bold Poniatowski plunged him in
   Never to re-emerge.

“Then stayed the strife.  The remnants wound
   Their Rhineward way pell-mell;
And thus did Leipzig City sound
   An Empire’s passing bell;

“While in cavalcade, with band and blade,
   Came Marshals, Princes, Kings;
And the town was theirs . . . Ay, as simple maid,
   My mother saw these things!

“And whenever those notes in the street begin,
   I recall her, and that far scene,
And her acting of how the Allies marched in,
   And her touse of the tambourine!”