ODE TO FRANCE. FEBRUARY, 1848. I. As, flake by flake, the beetling avalanches Build up their imminent crags of noiseless snow, Till some chance thrill the loosened ruin launches There seemed no strength in the dumb toiler's tears, No strength in suffering; but the Past was strong: The brute despair of trampled centuries Leaped up with one hoarse yell and snapped its bands, Groped for its right with horny, callous hands, And stared around for God with bloodshot eyes. What wonder if those palms were all too hard They whose thick atmosphere no bard Had shivered with the lightning of his song, In the crooked shoulder and the forehead low And physicked woe with woe? II. They did as they were taught; not theirs the blame, Mercy along the pavement of the street. They reared to thee such symbol as they knew, Holding a tyrant's head up by the clotted hair. III. What wrongs the Oppressor suffered, these we know ; These have found piteous voice in song and prose; But for the Oppressed, their darkness and their woe, Their grinding centuries, what Muse had those? Though hall and palace had nor eyes nor ears, Hardening a people's heart to senseless stone, Thou knewest them, O Earth, that drank their tears, O Heaven, that heard their inarticulate moan! They noted down their fetters, link by link; Coarse was the hand that scrawled, and red the ink; Rude was their score, as suits unlettered men, Notched with a headsman's axe upon a block: What marvel if, when came the avenging shock, 'T was Ate, not Urania, held the pen? IV. With eye averted and an anguished frown, Slow are the steps of Freedom, but her feet Turn never backward: hers no bloody glare; Her light is calm, and innocent, and sweet, Quivers and gleams that unconsuming fire; The peasant sees it leap from peak to peak Along his hills; the craftsman's burning eyes 'T was close beside him there, Sunrise whose Memnon is the soul of man. V. O Broker-King, is this thy wisdom's fruit? But now thy vulture eye was turned on Spain, A shout from Paris, and thy crown falls off, And thou become a fugitive and scoff: Slippery the feet that mount by stairs of gold, And weakest of all fences one of steel; Go and keep school again like him of old, The Syracusan tyrant; thou mayst feel Royal amid a birch-swayed commonweal! VI. Not long can he be ruler who allows His time to run before him; thou wast naught Soon as the strip of gold about thy brows Was no more emblem of the People's thought: Vain were thy bayonets against the foe Thou hadst to cope with; thou didst wage War not with Frenchmen merely ; · - no, Thy strife was with the Spirit of the Age, The invisible Spirit whose first breath divine Scattered thy frail endeavour, And, like poor last year's leaves, whirled thee and thine Into the Dark for ever! |