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FRANCE IN ’93.
- HARK! the onward heavy tread—
- Hark! the voices rude—
- ’Tis the famished cry for Bread
- From a wildered multitude.
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- They come! They come!
- Point the cannon—roll the drum;
- Thousands wail and weep with hunger—
- Faster let your soldiers number.
- Sword, and gun, and bayonet
- A famished people’s cries have met.
I.
- Hark! the onward heavy tread—
- Hark! the voices rude—
- ’Tis the famished cry for Bread
- From an armed multitude.
- They come! They come!
- Not with meek submission’s hum.
- Bloody trophy they have won,
- Ghastly glares it in the sun—
- Gory head on lifted pike.
- Ha! they weep not now, but strike.
II.
- Ye, the deaf ones to their cries—
- Ye, who scorned their agonies—
- ’Tis no longer prayers for bread
- Shriek in your ears the famishéd;
- But wildly, fiercely, peal on peal,
- Resoundeth—Down with the Bastile!
- Can ye tame a people now?
- Try them—flatter, promise, vow,
- Swear their wrongs shall be redressed—
- But patience—time will do the rest;
- Swear they shall one day be fed—
- Hark! the People—Dead for Dead!
III.
- Calculating statesmen, quail;
- Proud aristocrat, grow pale;
- Savage sounds that deathly song:
- Down with tyrants! Down with wrong!
- Blindly now they wreak revenge—
- How rudely do a mob avenge!
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- What! coronetted Prince of Peer,
- Will not the base‐born slavelings fear?
- Sooth, their cry is somewhat stern:
- Aristocrats, à la Lanterne!
- Ghastly fruit their lances bear—
- Noble heads with streaming hair;
- Diadem and kingly crown
- Strike the famine‐stricken down.
- Now, the People’s work is done—
- On they stride o’er prostrate throne;
- Royal blood of King and Queen
- Streameth from the guillotine;
- Wildly on the people goeth,
- Reaping what the noble soweth.
- Little dreamed he, prince or peer,
- Of who should be his heritor.
- Hunger now, at last, is sated
- In halls where once it wailed and waited;
- Wild Justice fiercely rives the laws
- Which failed to right a people’s cause.
- On that human ocean floweth,
- Whither stops it no one knoweth—
- Surge the wild waves in their strength
- Against all chartered rights at length—
- Throne, and King, and Noble fall;
- But the People—they hold Carnival!
IV.
