|
Leaves of Grass (1860)
contents
| previous
| next
FRANCE, The 18th Year of These States.
1 A GREAT year and place, |
A harsh, discordant, natal scream rising, to touch the
mother's heart closer than any yet.
|
2 I walked the shores of my Eastern Sea, |
Heard over the waves the little voice, |
Saw the divine infant, where she woke, mournfully
wailing, amid the roar of cannon, curses, shouts,
crash of falling buildings,
|
Was not so sick from the blood in the gutters running
—nor from the single corpses, nor those in heaps,
nor those borne away in the tumbrils,
|
Was not so desperate at the battues of death—was
not so shocked at the repeated fusillades of the
guns.
|
3 Pale, silent, stern, what could I say to that long-
accrued retribution?
|
Could I wish humanity different? |
Could I wish the people made of wood and stone? |
Or that there be no justice in destiny or time? |
View Page 407
|
4 O Liberty! O mate for me! |
Here too keeps the blaze, the bullet and the axe, in
reserve, to fetch them out in case of need,
|
Here too, though long deprest, still is not destroyed, |
Here too could rise at last, murdering and extatic, |
Here too would demand full arrears of vengeance. |
5 Hence I sign this salute over the sea, |
And I do not deny that terrible red birth and baptism, |
But remember the little voice that I heard wailing—
and wait with perfect trust, no matter how long,
|
And from to-day, sad and cogent, I maintain the
bequeath'd cause, as for all lands,
|
And I send these words to Paris, with my love, |
And I guess some chansonniers there will understand
them,
|
For I guess there is latent music yet in France—
floods of it,
|
O I hear already the bustle of instruments—they
will soon be drowning all that would interrupt
them,
|
O I think the east wind brings a triumphal and free
march,
|
It reaches hither—it swells me to joyful madness, |
I will run transpose it in words, to justify it, |
I will yet sing a song for you, ma femme. |
contents
| previous
| next
|
| |