You have got your revenge, old bluster! The crown is come to its own, and
more than its own.
6.
Stick your hands in your pockets, Jonathan--you are a made man from this
day;
You are mighty 'cute--and here is one of your bargains.
_FRANCE, THE EIGHTEENTH YEAR OF THESE STATES._[1]
1.
A great year and place;
A harsh, discordant, natal scream out-sounding, 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.
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?
3.
O Liberty! O mate for me!
Here too the blaze, the bullet, and the axe, in reserve to fetch them out
in case of need,
Here too, though long repressed, can never be destroyed;
Here too could rise at last, murdering and ecstatic;
Here too demanding full arrears of vengeance.
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