XLV.

Oh, solid Infantry! oh granite breasts! Like Rome’s Triarians there they stand or fall. Each flashing death-tube not an instant rests, Save where the bayonet-flash may more appal. By France outnumbered, yet till slaughtered all The ground they’d hold. Their wounded and their dead Are laid in one terrific line, a wall Of dauntless valour: by Leucadia’s head, So stood Leonides with Persia’s life-blood red!