The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore :: :: University of Virginia Library

Yes—if there yet live some of those,
Who, when this small Republic rose,
Quick as a startled hive of bees,
Against her leaguering enemies—
When, as the Royal Satrap shook
His well-known fetters at her gates,
Ev'n wives and mothers arm'd, and took
Their stations by their sons and mates;
And on these walls there stood—yet, no,
Shame to the traitors—would have stood

284

As firm a band as e'er let flow
At Freedom's base their sacred blood;
If those yet live, who, on that night,
When all were watching, girt for fight,
Stole, like the creeping of a pest,
From rank to rank, from breast to breast,
Filling the weak, the old with fears,—
Turning the heroine's zeal to tears,—
Betraying Honour to that brink,
Where, one step more, and he must sink—
And quenching hopes, which, though the last,
Like meteors on a drowning mast,
Would yet have led to death more bright,
Than life e'er look'd, in all its light!
Till soon, too soon, distrust, alarms
Throughout th' embattled thousands ran,
And the high spirit, late in arms,
The zeal, that might have work'd such charms,
Fell, like a broken talisman—
Their gates, that they had sworn should be
The gates of Death, that very dawn,
Gave passage widely, bloodlessly,
To the proud foe—nor sword was drawn,

285

Nor ev'n one martyr'd body cast
To stain their footsteps, as they pass'd;
But, of the many sworn at night
To do or die, some fled the sight,
Some stood to look, with sullen frown,
While some, in impotent despair,
Broke their bright armour and lay down,
Weeping, upon the fragments there!—
If those, I say, who brought that shame,
That blast upon Geneva's name,
Be living still—though crime so dark
Shall hang up, fix'd and unforgiven,
In History's page, th' eternal mark
For Scorn to pierce—so help me, Heaven,
I wish the traitorous slaves no worse,
No deeper, deadlier disaster,
From all earth's ills no fouler curse
Than to have --- their master!

In the year 1782, when the forces of Berne, Sardinia, and France laid siege to Geneva, and when, after a demonstration of heroism and self-devotion, which promised to rival the feats of their ancestors in 1602 against Savoy, the Genevans, either panic-struck or betrayed, to the surprise of all Europe, opened their gates to the besiegers, and submitted without a struggle to the extinction of their liberties. —See an account of this Revolution in Coxe's Switzerland.