University of Virginia Library

In the days when France snapt her old chains,
And rose up, and swore,
“We are men, we have hearts, we have brains,
We will slaves be no more
To king or to noble or priest,
But all men shall be
As brothers from bondage released,
All equal and free”:
And some stood in wonder amazed,
Their wits of no use;
And some said the people were crazed,
And Bedlam broke loose;
And some, in pure terror aghast,
In troops ran away;
But some held it safer to cast
Them into the fray;
While others took snuff with a smile,
As they tramped through the mud,
Saying, “Time we should teach this Canaille
By the letting of blood.”
Well, the people were mad, if you will,
In those days of hot rage,
Yet the shout of their multitudes still
Was the pulse of the age,
And the hope of the nations around,
Who waited on, dumb,
Thinking, “We too are fettered and bound:
Let us see what will come.”
But their kings and their nobles and priests
Gnashed their teeth when they saw,
And screamed at their altars and feasts,
“Ho! for God and the law!
Did He not make us lords of the world,
And these for our slaves?
Let our armies be mustered, and hurled
On their heads like sea-waves.”

In those days, then, when bold spirits ran
From prison to prison,
They came on a squalid old man,
Half-reft of his reason,
Who had been shut up for long years
In a stone-vaulted cell
Wet-walled with his sweat and his tears—
Why, no one could tell.
No record there was of his crime,
If crime he had done;
No trial had he at the time
When they shut out the sun
From his life; and alone there he lay,
And heard not a sound,
Save the grating of bolts once a day
In the silence profound,
Or the fall of a drop on the floor
From the roof overhead,
Though the streets might be all in a roar
To have wakened the dead;
And he dreamed, as he lay on his straw,
Of the sun and the lark,
And day followed day, and he saw
But the dusk and the dark;
For at noon it was gloaming down there,
And at evening, as death;
And still in the close, fœtid air
He was gasping for breath.—
So our shepherds took care that their flocks
Should not stray from the fold,
If stone walls and strong bars and locks
Might be trusted to hold.
But the bands of that mighty revolt
Flung open his door,
And cried, as they shattered the bolt,
“Thou art free, as of yore
When, a schoolboy, thy wont was to stray
By the wood and the brook,
And the trout in the ripple would play
With the gay-feathered hook;
Or when, as a man thou would'st go
To the tryst in the glen,
And love whispered, tender and low,
What is dearest to men.
Come forth from thy wet-walled cell,
Where the damp and the mould
And the dusk and the dark ever dwell
With the cramp and the cold;
Be merry, the land now is free,
And thy gaoler, the king,
Is where all wicked kings ought to be—
Go dance, then, and sing.”
They were rough, coarse fellows; and yet
They were touched to the quick
By the pale, bloodless spectre that met
Their gaze, and the sick
Wan flicker of light in his eye,
Which had not any hope,
Nor a longing to live or to die,—
Content just to mope,
Without converse of things unseen,
To sweeten his pain,
Or remembrance of things that had been,
To restore hope again.

So dazed, and uncertain, he crept
From his cell and his straw,
And they marked that he trembled and wept,
When the sunlight he saw;
And blinked, bewildered and blind,
Like an owl or a bat,
Feeling out with his lean hands to find
What he wished to be at;
For he had not seen daylight for years,
Only dim, pallid gleams
Through stanchions and cobwebs and tears,
Or at night in his dreams.
And it was not a joy, but a pain
To look on the light,
Or to see human faces again,
Or to stand straight upright.
So, dazed and amazed, forth he went
Through the iron-nailed gate,
All tremulous, shrinking, and bent,—
A man out of date.

He passed through the iron-nailed door,
For they said he was free
To do as he had done of yore,
When the hill and the sea
And the wood and the heath and the stream
Knew his coming so well—
Unless it was only a dream
He had dreamt in his cell.
Was he not once a lord, and had lands,
And a chateau somewhere,
And serfs who obeyed his commands,
And a wife passing fair—
Too fair—or was all that again
A dream and no more?
There were so many passed through his brain
As he lay on the floor
'Mong the straw, and had nothing to do.
Yea, a dream it had been,
For a king must be loyal and true
To his peers and his queen.
Then he smote his thin palm on his brow,
As if striving to see
What would never come clear to him now-
Best never to be!
Just a glimmer of light broke on him,
With a spasm of pain,
Then the grey look, sodden and dim,
Settled on him again.

Oh the horror and terror of that
Aimless walk up the street!
Was he sleeping or waking? and what
At next turn should he meet?
Now his ear was jarred with the strain
Of the wild Marseillaise;
Then his heart was smit with the pain
Of some wolf-hungry gaze.
And why were the workmen abroad
In the hours of their toil?
And where were the good priests of God
With the pyx and the oil?
And where was his light-hearted France,
And its wit-loving soul?
And who were those dames in the dance
Of the mad Carmagnole?
And oh the fell rush and the tramp
Of the hurrying throng!
And the sights here and there by the lamp,
As they bore him along,
Where they'd hoisted a noble, perhaps,—
As the nobles of yore
Nailed the vermin they caught in their traps
To the big barn door,—
With maybe a priest by his side
In his old black soutane—
They were fain to have priests, when they died,
So they coupled the twain.
And then, as he shuddered and stared,
The tumbril drove past
With the victims that law had ensnared—
Some pale and aghast,
Some gay as to wedding they rode,
Some mocking with scorn
The crowd, that was raging for blood
Of the high and well-born.
There were matrons and maidens fair,
Who bent their heads low;
No powder they need for their hair,
It is white now as snow.
There were old men and boys doomed to die;
What could it all mean?
And lo! in the distance rose high
The black guillotine.

As they hurried him onward, at first
He would shout like the rest,
As if some fell demon accursed
Had got into his breast.
But at length on the skirt of the crowd
The madness was quelled,
And his soul within him was bowed
At the sights he beheld.
Could that be the pulse and the throb
Of a great-thoughted age—
That hoarse, fierce yell of a mob
In its masterless rage?
How they jostled and struggled and plashed
Through the mire and the mud.
The frantic Unbreechedand Unwashed,
In their craving for blood!

Once more for a moment his brain
Had clearness and power,
And the soul of his youth came again
In that terrible hour.
He had fain closed his eyes at the sight
He was looking on there;
But so strong was the spell in its might
That he could not but stare,
While he sickened to gaze on that hell
Of the fiend and the brute,
Which was holding him fast in its spell,
Tongue-tied there and mute
And where were the nobles of France,
And the knight and the squire?
And where were the sword and the lance,
And the cord and the fire?
And where was the king and the throne,
And the order of state?
And where all the world he had known,
And forgotten of late?
Flashed a light in his eye, and a frown
On his forehead was plain;
Then the dull grey look settled down
Apathetic again.

Next day he came back to his gaol,
Looking weary and sore,
And prayed with a pitiful wail
They would open its door.
No, he had not committed a crime;
He had just lost his head,
And he did not belong to the time,
And his friends were all dead.
Would they not let him back to his cell,
And its straw and its peace?
And there for the rest he would dwell,
Till death brought release.
“For it pains me, the glare of the light,
And they fill me with fear,
The horrors that meet me by night,
And the sounds that I hear.
Still the tocsin is ringing and ringing,
And women are seen
That song of the Marseillaise singing
Round the black guillotine;
And princes and nobles are killed
By the axe and the cord,
And orgies of darkness are held
In the courts of the Lord;
And there is not a priest to confess,
Nor a monk begging alms,
Nor a pyx for a soul in distress,
Nor a nun singing psalms.
And all in confusion is whirled,
And strangeness and fear;
And I have but one friend in the world,
And lo! he is here.”
So they let him go back to his cell,
And the straw and the mat
And his friend, who could he be? Ah! well;
The friend was a rat.

Do you mock at my story because
Thus lamely it ends,
But the man in a prison-cell has
Small choice of his friends:
Just turns from the hard stones to aught
That has life in it—now
To a seedling flower, chance blown, and taught
In his window to grow;
And now to a spider whose web
Was devouring his light,
For life clings to life in the ebb
And dead hour of its night;
And there is a pathos where such
Fond clinging appears,
A something human to touch
The deep fount of tears.
So, I deem that his instinct was true
When he turned back to that
Which was the one friend that he knew,
Were it only a rat.
It was something that trusted in him,
Something to love,
And it shed on his darkness a dim
Feeble light from above.