Now from the dark artillery broke
Lightning flash and thunder stroke;
And cloud on cloud of fiery smoke
Rolls in the darken’d air:
Wrapp’d in its shade, unheard, unseen,
Artful surprise and onset keen
The crafty foes prepare--
Three columns of the flower of France
With rapid step and firm, advance,
At first thro’ tangled ground,
O’er fence and dell and deep ravine;
At length they reach the level green--
The midnight battle’s murderous scene--
The valley’s eastern bound.
There in a rapid line they form,
Thence are just rushing to the storm
By bold Belluno led,
When sudden thunders shake the vale,
Day seems, as if eclipsed, to fail,
The light of heaven is fled;
A dusty whirlwind rides the sky,
A living tempest rushes by
With deafening clang and tread--
‘A charge! a charge!’ the British cry,
‘And Seymour at its head.’