As a rock by blue lightning divided
      Down the hillside scatters its course,
      So in twain their army is parted
      By the sabres sabring in force: 
   They have striven enough for honour! . . . and now
   Crumble and shatter, and sheer o’er the bank
   Where torrent Danube hisses and swirls
   Slant and hurry in rankless rank:—­
      There are sixty thousand the morn
      ’Gainst the Lions marching in scorn;
      But twenty, when even is here,
Broken and brave and at bay, the Lilied banner uprear.

      —­So be it!—­All honour to him
      Who snatch’d the world, in his day,
      From an overmastering King,
      A colossal imperial sway! 
   Calm adamantine endurant chief,
   Fit forerunner of him, whose crowning stroke,
   Rousing his Guards on the Flandrian plain,
   Unvassall’d Europe from despot yoke! 
      He who from Ganges to Rhine
      Traced o’er the world his red line
      Irresistible; while in the breast
Reign’d devotedness utter, and self for England suppress’d!

      O names that enhearten the soul,
      Blenheim and Waterloo! 
      In no vain worship of glory
      The poet turns him to you! 
   O sung by worthier song than mine,
   If the day of a nation’s weakness rise,
   Of the little counsels that dare not dare,
   Of a land that no more on herself relies,—­
      O breath of our great ones that were,
      Burn out this taint in the air! 
      The old heart of England restore,
Till the blood of the heroes awake, and shout in her bosom once more!

      —­Morning is fresh on the field
      Where the war-sick champions lie,
      By the wreckage of stiffening dead,
      The anguish that yearns but to die. 
   Ah note of human agony heard
   The paean of victory over and through! 
   Ah voice of duty and justice stern
   That, at e’en this price, commands them to do! 
      And a vision of Glory goes by,
      Veil’d head and remorseful eye,
      A triumph of Death!—­And they cried
’Only less dark than defeat is the morning of conquest’;—­and sigh’d.

Blenheim is fully described in Lord Stanhope’s Reign of Queen Anne.  Its importance as a critical battle in European history lies in the fact that the work of liberating the Great Alliance against the paramount power of France under Lewis XIV, (which England had unwisely fostered from Cromwell to James II), was secured by this victory.  ’The loss of France could not be measured by men or fortresses.  A hundred victories since Rocroi had taught the world to regard the armies of Lewis as all but invincible, when Blenheim and the surrender of the flower of the French soldiery broke the spell’:  (Green:  History of the English People:  B. VIII:  ch. iii).