Pike County Ballads and Other Poems

WANDERLIEDER.

  SUNRISE IN THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE.
  (PARIS, AUGUST 1865.)

  I stand at the break of day
  In the Champs Elysees.
  The tremulous shafts of dawning,
  As they shoot o'er the Tuileries early,
  Strike Luxor's cold grey spire,
  And wild in the light of the morning
  With their marble manes on fire,
  Ramp the white Horses of Marly.

  But the Place of Concord lies
  Dead hushed 'neath the ashy skies.
  And the Cities sit in council
  With sleep in their wide stone eyes.
  I see the mystic plain
  Where the army of spectres slain
  In the Emperor's life-long war
  March on with unsounding tread
  To trumpets whose voice is dead.
  Their spectral chief still leads them,—
  The ghostly flash of his sword
  Like a comet through mist shines far,—
  And the noiseless host is poured,
  For the gendarme never heeds them,
  Up the long dim road where thundered
  The army of Italy onward
  Through the great pale Arch of the Star!

  The spectre army fades
  Far up the glimmering hill,
  But, vaguely lingering still,
  A group of shuddering shades
  Infects the pallid air,
  Growing dimmer as day invades
  The hush of the dusky square.
  There is one that seems a King,
  As if the ghost of a Crown
  Still shadowed his jail-bleached hair;
  I can hear the guillotine ring,
  As its regicide note rang there,
  When he laid his tired life down
  And grew brave in his last despair.
  And a woman frail and fair
  Who weeps at leaving a world
  Of love and revel and sin
  In the vast Unknown to be hurled;
  (For life was wicked and sweet
  With kings at her small white feet!)
  And one, every inch a Queen,
  In life and in death a Queen,
  Whose blood baptized the place,
  In the days of madness and fear,—
  Her shade has never a peer
  In majesty and grace.

  Murdered and murderers swarm;
  Slayers that slew and were slain,
  Till the drenched place smoked with the rain
  That poured in a torrent warm,—
  Till red as the Riders of Edom
  Were splashed the white garments of Freedom
  With the wash of the horrible storm!

  And Liberty's hands were not clean
  In the day of her pride unchained,
  Her royal hands were stained
  With the life of a King and Queen;
  And darker than that with the blood
  Of the nameless brave and good
  Whose blood in witness clings
  More damning than Queens' and Kings'.

  Has she not paid it dearly?
  Chained, watching her chosen nation
  Grinding late and early
  In the mills of usurpation?
  Have not her holy tears,
  Flowing through shameful years,
  Washed the stains from her tortured hands?
  We thought so when God's fresh breeze,
  Blowing over the sleeping lands,
  In 'Forty-Eight waked the world,
  And the Burgher-King was hurled
  From that palace behind the trees.

  As Freedom with eyes aglow
  Smiled glad through her childbirth pain,
  How was the mother to know
  That her woe and travail were vain?
  A smirking servant smiled
  When she gave him her child to keep;
  Did she know he would strangle the child
  As it lay in his arms asleep?

  Liberty's cruellest shame!
  She is stunned and speechless yet,
  In her grief and bloody sweat
  Shall we make her trust her blame?
  The treasure of 'Forty-Eight
  A lurking jail-bird stole,
  She can but watch and wait
  As the swift sure seasons roll.

  And when in God's good hour
  Comes the time of the brave and true,
  Freedom again shall rise
  With a blaze in her awful eyes
  That shall wither this robber-power
  As the sun now dries the dew.
  This Place shall roar with the voice
  Of the glad triumphant people,
  And the heavens be gay with the chimes
  Ringing with jubilant noise
  From every clamorous steeple
  The coming of better times.
  And the dawn of Freedom waking
  Shall fling its splendours far
  Like the day which now is breaking
  On the great pale Arch of the Star,
  And back o'er the town shall fly,
  While the joy-bells wild are ringing,
  To crown the Glory springing
  From the Column of July!