Poems, Victor Hugo [highly recommended books TXT] 📗

knave is nobler than the fool! Get all you can and keep it! Life’s a pool, The best luck wins; if Virtue starves in rags, I laugh at Virtue; here’s my money-bags! Here’s righteous metal! We have kings, I say, To keep cash going, and the game at play; There’s why a king wants money—he’d be missed Without a fertilizing civil list.

Do but try The question with a steady moral eye! The colonel strives to be a brigadier, The marshal, constable. Call the game fair, And pay your winners! Show the trump, I say! A renegade’s a rascal—till the day They make him Pasha: is he rascal then? What with these sequins? Bah! you speak to Men, And Men want money—power—luck—life’s joy— Those take who can: we could, and fobbed Savoy; For those who live content with honest state, They’re public pests; knock we ‘em on the pate! They set a vile example! Quick—arrest That Fool, who ruled and failed to line his nest. Just hit a bell, you’ll see the clapper shake— Meddle with Priests, you’ll find the barrack wake— Ah! Princes know the People’s a tight boot, March ‘em sometimes to be shot and to shoot, Then they’ll wear easier. So let them preach The righteousness of howitzers; and teach At the fag end of prayer: “Now, slit their throats! My holy Zouaves! my good yellow-coats!” We like to see the Holy Father send Powder and steel and lead without an end, To feed Death fat; and broken battles mend. So they!

IV.

 

But thou, our Hero, baffled, foiled, The Glorious Chief who vainly bled and toiled. The trust of all the Peoples—Freedom’s Knight! The Paladin unstained—the Sword of Right! What wilt thou do, whose land finds thee but jails! The banished claim the banished! deign to cheer The refuge of the homeless—enter here, And light upon our households dark will fall Even as thou enterest. Oh, Brother, all, Each one of us—hurt with thy sorrows’ proof, Will make a country for thee of his roof. Come, sit with those who live as exiles learn: Come! Thou whom kings could conquer but not yet turn. We’ll talk of “Palermo”[2]—“the Thousand” true, Will tell the tears of blood of France to you; Then by his own great Sea we’ll read, together, Old Homer in the quiet summer weather, And after, thou shalt go to thy desire While that faint star of Justice grows to fire.[3]

V.

Oh, Italy! hail your Deliverer, Oh, Nations! almost he gave Rome to her! Strong-arm and prophet-heart had all but come To win the city, and to make it “Rome.” Calm, of the antique grandeur, ripe to be Named with the noblest of her history. He would have Romanized your Rome—controlled Her glory, lordships, Gods, in a new mould. Her spirits’ fervor would have melted in The hundred cities with her; made a twin Vesuvius and the Capitol; and blended Strong Juvenal’s with the soul, tender and splendid, Of Dante—smelted old with new alloy— Stormed at the Titans’ road full of bold joy Whereby men storm Olympus. Italy, Weep!—This man could have made one Rome of thee!

VI.

But the crime’s wrought! Who wrought it?

Honest Man— Priest Pius? No! Each does but what he can. Yonder’s the criminal! The warlike wight Who hides behind the ranks of France to fight, Greek Sinon’s blood crossed thick with Judas-Jew’s, The Traitor who with smile which true men woos, Lip mouthing pledges—hand grasping the knife— Waylaid French Liberty, and took her life. Kings, he is of you! fit companion! one Whom day by day the lightning looks upon Keen; while the sentenced man triples his guard And trembles; for his hour approaches hard. Ye ask me “when?” I say soon! Hear ye not Yon muttering in the skies above the spot? Mark ye no coming shadow, Kings? the shroud Of a great storm driving the thunder-cloud? Hark! like the thief-catcher who pulls the pin, God’s thunder asks to speak to one within!

VII.

And meanwhile this death-odor—this corpse-scent Which makes the priestly incense redolent Of rotting men, and the Te Deums stink— Reeks through the forests—past the river’s brink, O’er wood and plain and mountain, till it fouls Fair Paris in her pleasures; then it prowls, A deadly stench, to Crete, to Mexico, To Poland—wheresoe’er kings’ armies go: And Earth one Upas-tree of bitter sadness, Opening vast blossoms of a bloody madness. Throats cut by thousands—slain men by the ton! Earth quite corpse-cumbered, though the half not done! They lie, stretched out, where the blood-puddles soak, Their black lips gaping with the last cry spoke. “Stretched;” nay! sown broadcast; yes, the word is “sown.” The fallows Liberty—the harsh wind blown Over the furrows, Fate: and these stark dead Are grain sublime, from Death’s cold fingers shed To make the Abyss conceive: the Future bear More noble Heroes! Swell, oh, Corpses dear! Rot quick to the green blade of Freedom! Death! Do thy kind will with them! They without breath, Stripped, scattered, ragged, festering, slashed and blue, Dangle towards God the arms French shot tore through And wait in meekness, Death! for Him and You!

VIII.

Oh, France! oh, People! sleeping unabashed! Liest thou like a hound when it was lashed? Thou liest! thine own blood fouling both thy hands, And on thy limbs the rust of iron bands, And round thy wrists the cut where cords went deep. Say did they numb thy soul, that thou didst sleep? Alas! sad France is grown a cave for sleeping, Which a worse night than Midnight holds in keeping, Thou sleepest sottish—lost to life and fame— While the stars stare on thee, and pale for shame. Stir! rouse thee! Sit! if thou know’st not to rise; Sit up, thou tortured sluggard! ope thine eyes! Stretch thy brawn, Giant! Sleep is foul and vile! Art fagged, art deaf, art dumb? art blind this while? They lie who say so! Thou dost know and feel The things they do to thee and thine. The heel That scratched thy neck in passing—whose? Canst say? Yes, yes, ‘twas his, and this is his fête-day. Oh, thou that wert of humankind—couched so— A beast of burden on this dunghill! oh! Bray to them, Mule! Oh, Bullock! bellow then! Since they have made thee blind, grope in thy den! Do something, Outcast One, that wast so grand! Who knows if thou putt’st forth thy poor maimed hand, There may be venging weapon within reach! Feel with both hands—with both huge arms go stretch Along the black wall of thy cellar. Nay, There may be some odd thing hidden away? Who knows—there may! Those great hands might so come In course of ghastly fumble through the gloom, Upon a sword—a sword! The hands once clasp Its hilt, must wield it with a Victor’s grasp.

EDWIN ARNOLD, C.S.I.

[Footnote 1: The Battle of Mentana, so named from a village by Rome, was fought between the allied French and Papal Armies and the Volunteer Forces of Garibaldi, Nov. 3, 1867.]

[Footnote 2: Palermo was taken immediately after the Garibaldian volunteers, 1000 strong, landed at Marsala to inaugurate the rising which made Italy free.]

[Footnote 3: Both poet and his idol lived to see the French Republic for the fourth time proclaimed. When Hugo rose in the Senate, on the first occasion after his return to Paris after the expulsion of the Napoleons, and his white head was seen above that of Rouher, ex-Prime Minister of the Empire, all the house shuddered, and in a nearly unanimous voice shouted: “The judgment of God! expiation!”]

 

LES CHANSONS DES RUES ET DES BOIS.

 

LOVE OF THE WOODLAND.

(“Orphée au bois du Caystre.”)

[Bk. I. ii.]

 

Orpheus, through the hellward wood Hurried, ere the eve-star glowed, For the fauns’ lugubrious hoots Followed, hollow, from crookèd roots; Aeschylus, where Aetna smoked, Gods of Sicily evoked With the flute, till sulphur taint Dulled and lulled the echoes faint; Pliny, soon his style mislaid, Dogged Miletus’ merry maid, As she showed eburnean limbs All-multiplied by brooklet brims; Plautus, see! like Plutus, hold Bosomfuls of orchard-gold, Learns he why that mystic core Was sweet Venus’ meed of yore? Dante dreamt (while spirits pass As in wizard’s jetty glass) Each black-bossed Briarian trunk Waved live arms like furies drunk; Winsome Will, ‘neath Windsor Oak, Eyed each elf that cracked a joke At poor panting grease-hart fast— Obese, roguish Jack harassed; At Versailles, Molière did court Cues from Pan (in heron port, Half in ooze, half treeward raised), “Words so witty, that Boileau’s ‘mazed!”

Foliage! fondly you attract! Dian’s faith I keep intact, And declare that thy dryads dance Still, and will, in thy green expanse!

 

SHOOTING STARS.

[FOR MY LITTLE CHILD ONLY.]

(“Tas de feux tombants.”)

[Bk. III. vii.]

 

See the scintillating shower!

Like a burst from golden mine— Incandescent coals that pour

From the incense-bowl divine, And around us dewdrops, shaken,

Mirror each a twinkling ray ‘Twixt the flowers that awaken

In this glory great as day. Mists and fogs all vanish fleetly;

And the birds begin to sing, Whilst the rain is murm’ring sweetly

As if angels echoing. And, methinks, to show she’s grateful

For this seed from heaven come, Earth is holding up a plateful

Of the birds and buds a-bloom!

 

L’ANNÉE TERRIBLE.

 

TO LITTLE JEANNE.

(“Vous eûtes donc hier un an.”)

[September, 1870.]

 

You’ve lived a year, then, yesterday, sweet child, Prattling thus happily! So fledglings wild, New-hatched in warmer nest ‘neath sheltering bough, Chirp merrily to feel their feathers grow. Your mouth’s a rose, Jeanne! In these volumes grand Whose pictures please you—while I trembling stand To see their big leaves tattered by your hand— Are noble lines; but nothing half your worth, When all your tiny frame rustles with mirth To welcome me. No work of author wise Can match the thought half springing to your eyes, And your dim reveries, unfettered, strange, Regarding man with all the boundless range Of angel innocence. Methinks, ‘tis clear That God’s not far, Jeanne, when I see you here.

Ah! twelve months old: ‘tis quite an age, and brings Grave moments, though your soul to rapture clings, You’re at that hour of life most like to heaven, When present joy no cares, no sorrows leaven When man no shadow feels: if fond caress Round parent twines, children the world possess. Your waking hopes, your dreams of mirth and love From Charles to Alice, father to mother, rove; No wider range of view your heart can take Than what her nursing and his bright smiles make; They two alone on this your opening hour Can gleams of tenderness and gladness pour: They two—none else, Jeanne! Yet ‘tis just, and I, Poor grandsire, dare but to stand humbly by. You come—I go: though gloom alone my right, Blest be the destiny which gives you light.

Your fair-haired brother George and you beside Me play—in watching you is all my pride; And all I ask—by countless sorrows tried— The grave; o’er which in shadowy form may show Your cradles gilded by the morning’s glow.

Pure new-born wonderer! your infant life Strange welcome found, Jeanne, in this time of strife. Like wild-bee humming through the woods your play, And baby smiles have dared a world at bay: Your tiny accents lisp their gentle charms To mighty Paris clashing mighty arms. Ah! when I see you, child, and when I hear You sing, or try, with low voice whispering near, And touch of fingers soft, my grief to cheer, I dream this darkness, where the tempests groan, Trembles, and passes with half-uttered moan. For though these hundred towers of Paris bend, Though close as foundering ship her glory’s end, Though rocks the universe, which we defend; Still to great cannon on our ramparts piled, God sends His blessing by a little child.

MARWOOD TUCKER.

 

TO A SICK