No More Learning

The committee open the box; set up the regal ribs; glue those that will not
stay;
Clap the skull on top of the ribs, and clap a crown on top of the skull.

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.

Hence I sign this salute over the sea,
And I do not deny that terrible red birth and baptism,
But remember the little voice that I heard wailing--and wait with perfect
trust, no matter how long;
And from to-day, sad and cogent, I maintain the bequeathed cause, as for
all lands,
And I send these words to Paris with my love,
And I guess some _chansonniers_ there will understand them,
For I guess there is latent music yet in France--floods of it.
O I hear already the bustle of instruments--they will soon be drowning all
that would interrupt them;
O I think the east wind brings a triumphal and free march,
It reaches hither--it swells me to joyful madness,
I will run transpose it in words, to justify it,
I will yet sing a song for you, _ma femme! _

[Footnote 1: 1793-4---The great poet of Democracy is "not so shocked" at
the great European year of Democracy. ]



_EUROPE, THE SEVENTY-SECOND AND SEVENTY-THIRD YEARS OF THESE STATES. _[1]


1.

Suddenly, out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves,
Like lightning it leaped forth, half startled at itself,
Its feet upon the ashes and the rags--its hands tight to the throats of
kings.

O hope and faith!
O aching close of exiled patriots' lives!
O many a sickened heart!
Turn back unto this day, and make yourselves afresh.


2.

And you, paid to defile the People! you liars, mark!