Slight blasts of heated withering air, as if from an oven, would occasionally strike the face as we walked along; sometimes they were loaded with those peculiar and most agreeable odours that arise from different kinds of gums.

There were also irregular tongues of dead and scattered dead, with arms outstretched or under them as they fell, and faces white even in the reddish glare of the rockets and turned toward you in the charge that failed under the withering blasts of machine-guns, ripping out two or three hundred shots a minute, and well-aimed rifle-bullets, each bullet getting its man.

Blooms on, unfaded by Time's withering breath, In these proud ashes what a prize is thine!