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16
HISTORICAL BALLADS.
The Tatars they must back retreat
Before defence so brave.
Then raged in fury at defeat
The Tatar nation wild,
The angry Khan upon them frown’d,
With dark displeasure fill’d.
Into three columns now itself
The heathen host divides,
And in three columns furiously
They storm the mountain’s sides.
The Christians fell’d a score of trees,
All twenty as they grew,
And roll’d them from the summit down
Their battlements unto.
And now the Tatars storm the hill,
Shouting with fearful din,
That far and wide ascends, and now
To breach the walls begin.
Down from the walls the trees they hurl,
Like worms the Tatar foe
They crush, and spread destruction wide
Upon the plain below.
And long and savagely ’twas fought,
Until the gloom of night
