University of Virginia Library

Wake from a thousand thunderbolts one crash
Win from a thousand lightning-strokes one flash
Revive, in ravages of blasts and rains,
The uproar of a century's hurricanes;
Let earthquake, locked by slumber from alarms,
Yawn yet again with subterranean arms;
Bid pest and famine riot anew; make all
A single concentrated blow to appal
Our world;—and still such magnitude of might
Were weak beside the amazement, the affright,
The opprobrium, eulogy, disdain or joy
Wrought in an hour by this Imperial Boy.

From lands that despotism and slavery sear,
What means his heavenly heart-cry, pealing clear?
Aghast we marvel at the work so grand
That fate's miraculous mystery hath planned.
Though oft her whims be wayward, sharp her shocks,
Why daze us with such dizzying paradox? ...
Is this the Russia that we knew erewhile,
Knouts in her frown and sabres in her smile?
Whose ruffian dynasty of sovereigns rose
Crime-crowned and ermined by Siberian snows?
Whose thrones were scaffolds, and who shaped her laws
Taloned with terror, like her bear's black paws?
In galleries of whose palaces would lurk
Assassination with its butchering dirk?
The rubies of whose Urals were not more
Than blood-drops on her torture-chamber's floor?
Whose halls of justice were a dungeon's hells,
Whose juries were its Moujik sentinels?
Whose Alexanders, Katharines, Pauls, Ivàns
Gave every sin full freedom, yet slew man's?

Ah, never yet, sage history, hast thou known
Figs thus from thorns or grapes from thistles grown!
In vain, philosophy, shall thy best lore
This radiant inconsistency explore!
Yet even as through a swamp's dark reek of mire
Some lily of taintless petal may aspire,
So climbs through tyranny's gross mirk and bane
The power and splendour of a soul humane.
At last we read on destiny's dim scroll
What empire may an emperor control,
And thrilled through earth's five continents we see
An autocrat's divine autocracy.
Heed it or scorn, ye kings whose prides and fears
With death have barricaded your frontiers;
Heed it or scorn, abuzz like broods of gnats,
Ye deft and oleaginous diplomats;
Heed it or scorn, ye money-gorging mess,
Who coin from slaughter your percentages;
Heed it or scorn, ye politicians wise,
Who garb self-worship in a patriot's guise;
Heed it or scorn, ye concourse near and far,
Who feast like vultures on the woes of war,
And quaff with thirst unsated from their flood
Inebriant vintages of tears and blood!
Heed it or scorn. ... Howe'er with subtlest mien
Procrastination on her crutch may lean;
Howe'er expediency, like some coy lass,
May attitudinise before her glass;
Howe'er sly sophistry, with leer of ice,
Clicks or manipulates his loaded dice;
Howe'er all hindrance, massed and interblent,
Grow mountainous in its impediment,
Still shall this Message, rich with sacred cheers,
Lend ardour to the iconoclastic years,
And bid them, at some future hour's glad reign,
Cleanse from all nations' brows the Brand of Cain.