Pike County Ballads and Other Poems

A TRIUMPH OF ORDER.

  A squad of regular infantry,
    In the Commune's closing days,
  Had captured a crowd of rebels
    By the wall of Pere-la-Chaise.

  There were desperate men, wild women,
    And dark-eyed Amazon girls,
  And one little boy, with a peach-down cheek
    And yellow clustering curls.

  The captain seized the little waif,
    And said, "What dost thou here?"
  "Sapristi, Citizen captain!
    I'm a Communist, my dear!"

  "Very well!  Then you die with the others!"
  —"Very well!  That's my affair;
  But first let me take to my mother,
    Who lives by the wine-shop there,

  "My father's watch.  You see it;
    A gay old thing, is it not?
  It would please the old lady to have it;
    Then I'll come back here, and be shot."

  "That is the last we shall see of him,"
    The grizzled captain grinned,
  As the little man skimmed down the hill
    Like a swallow down the wind.

  For the joy of killing had lost its zest
    In the glut of those awful days,
  And Death writhed, gorged like a greedy snake,
    From the Arch to Pere-la-Chaise.

  But before the last platoon had fired
    The child's shrill voice was heard;
  "Houp-la! the old girl made such a row
    I feared I should break my word."

  Against the bullet-pitted wall
    He took his place with the rest,
  A button was lost from his ragged blouse,
    Which showed his soft white breast.

  "Now blaze away, my children!
    With your little one-two-three!"
  The Chassepots tore the stout young heart,
    And saved Society.