Flints,[1] clods, and javelins hurling as they fly,
As rage and wild despair their hands supply.
And soon disperst, their bands attempt no more
To guard the fountain or defend the shore:
O'er the wide lawns no more their troops appear:
Nor sleeps the vengeance of the victor here;
To teach the nations what tremendous fate
From his dread arm on perjur'd vows should wait,
He seized the time to awe the Eastern World,
And on the breach of faith his thunders hurl'd.
From his black ships the sudden lightnings blaze,
And o'er old ocean flash their dreadful rays:
White clouds on clouds inroll'd the smoke ascends,
The bursting tumult heaven's wide concave rends:
The bays and caverns of the winding shore
Repeat the cannon's and the mortar's roar:
The bombs, far-flaming, hiss along the sky
And whirring through the air the bullets fly;
The wounded air, with hollow deafened sound,
Groans to the direful strife, and trembles round.
- ↑ Flints, clods, and javelins hurling as they fly,
As rage, &c.Jamque faces et saxa volant, furor arma ministrat. Virg. Æn. I.
The Spanish commentator on this place relates a very extraordinary instance of the furor arma ministrans. A Portuguese soldier, at the siege of Diu in the Indies, being surrounded by the enemy, and having no ball to charge his musket, pulled out one of his teeth, and with it supplied the place of a bullet.
