, when to gain his beauteous charmer's smile,
The youthful lover dares the bloody toil,[108]
Before the nodding bull's stern front he stands,
He leaps, he wheels, he shouts, and waves his hands:
The lordly brute disdains the stripling's rage,
His nostrils smoke, and, eager to engage,
His horned brows he levels with the ground,
And shuts his flaming eyes, and wheeling round
With dreadful bellowing rushes on the foe,
And lays the boastful gaudy champion low.
Thus to the sight the sons of Lusus sprung,
Nor slow to fall their ample vengeance hung:
With sudden roar the carabines resound,
And bursting echoes from the hills rebound;
The lead flies hissing through the trembling air,
And death's fell daemons through the flashes glare.
Where, up the land, a grove of palms enclose,
And cast their shadows where the fountain flows,
The lurking ambush from their treach'rous stand
Beheld the combat burning on the strand:
They see the flash with sudden lightnings flare,
And the blue smoke slow rolling on the air:
They see their warriors drop, and starting hear
The ling'ring thunders bursting on their ear.
Amaz'd, appall'd, the treach'rous ambush fled,
And rag'd,[109] and curs'd their birth, and quak'd with dread.
The bands that vaunting show'd their threaten'd might,
With slaughter gor'd, precipitate in flight;
Yet oft, though trembling, on the foe they turn
Their eyes that red with lust of vengeance burn:
Aghast with fear, and stern with desperate rage
The flying war with dreadful howls they wage,
Flints, clods, and javelins hurling as they fly,
As rage[110] and wild despair their hands supply:
And, soon dispers'd, 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 right 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:
T