Turn back unto this day, and make
yourselves
afresh.
Whitman
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!
Not for numberless agonies, murders, lusts,
For court thieving in its manifold mean forms, worming from his simplicity
the poor man's wages,
For many a promise sworn by royal lips, and broken, and laughed at in the
breaking,
Then in their power, not for all these did the blows strike revenge, or the
heads of the nobles fall;
The People scorned the ferocity of kings.
3.
But the sweetness of mercy brewed bitter destruction, and the frightened
rulers come back;
Each comes in state with his train--hangman, priest, tax-gatherer,
Soldier, lawyer, lord, jailer, and sycophant.
4.
Yet behind all, lowering, stealing--lo, a Shape,
Vague as the night, draped interminably, head, front, and form, in scarlet
folds,
Whose face and eyes none may see:
Out of its robes only this--the red robes, lifted by the arm--
One finger crooked, pointed high over the top, like the head of a snake
appears.
5.
Meanwhile, corpses lie in new-made graves--bloody corpses of young men;
The rope of the gibbet hangs heavily, the bullets of princes are flying,
the creatures of power laugh aloud,
And all these things bear fruits--and they are good.
Those corpses of young men,
Those martyrs that hang from the gibbets--those hearts pierced by the grey
lead,
Cold and motionless as they seem, live elsewhere with unslaughtered
vitality.
They live in other young men, O kings!
They live in brothers, again ready to defy you!
They were purified by death--they were taught and exalted.
Not a grave of the murdered for freedom but grows seed for freedom, in its
turn to bear seed,
Which the winds carry afar and resow, and the rains and the snows nourish.
