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I / Oh blood and thunder! and oh blood and wounds! / These are but vulgar oaths, as you may deem, / Too gentle reader! and most shocking sounds: / And so they are; yet thus is Glory's dream / Unriddled, and as my true Muse expounds / At present such things, since they are her theme, / So be they her inspirers! Call them Mars, / Bellona, what you will -- they mean but wars.
II / All was prepared -- the fire, the sword, the men / To wield them in their terrible array. / The army, like a lion from his den, / March'd forth with nerve and sinews bent to slay, -- / A human Hydra, issuing from its fen / To breathe destruction on its winding way, / Whose heads were heroes, which cut off in vain / Immediately in others grew again.