Poems, Victor Hugo [highly recommended books TXT] 📗
- Author: Victor Hugo
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VIII.
From a cavern wide In the rent cloud’s side, In sulphurous showers The red flame pours. The palaces fall
In the lurid light, Which casts a red pall
O’er their facades white!
Oh, Sodom! Gomorrah! What a dome of horror Rests now on your walls! On you the cloud falls, Nation perverse!
On your fated heads, From its fell jaws, a curse
Its lightning fierce spreads!
The people awaken
Which godlessly slept; Their palaces shaken,
Their offences unwept! Their rolling cars all
Meet and crash in the street; And the crowds, for a pall,
Find flames round their feet!
Numberless dead, Round these high towers spread, Still sleep in the shade By their rugged heights made; Colossi of rocks In ill-steadied blocks! So hang on a wall Black ants, like a pall!
To escape is in vain From this horrible rain!
Alas! all things die; In the lightning’s red flash The bridges all crash; ‘Neath the tiles the flame creeps; From the fire-struck steeps Falls on the pavements below, All lurid in glow,
Rolling down from on high!
Beneath every spark,
The red, tyrannous fire Mounts up in the dark
Ever redder and higher; More swiftly than steed
Uncontrolled, see it pass!
Horrid idols all twist,
By the crumbling flame kissed In their infamous dread,
Shrivelled members of brass!
It grows angry, flows on, Silver towers fall down Unforeseen, like a dream In its green and red stream, Which lights up the walls Ere one crashes and falls, Like the changeable scale Of a lizard’s bright mail. Agate, porphyry, cracks And is melted to wax! Bend low to their doom These stones of the tomb! E’en the great marble giant Called Nabo, sways pliant Like a tree; whilst the flare
Seemed each column to scorch
As it blazed like a torch Round and round in the air.
The magi, in vain, From the heights to the plain Their gods’ images carry
In white tunic: they quake—
No idol can make The blue sulphur tarry; The temple e’en where they meet, Swept under their feet In the folds of its sheet! Turns a palace to coal! Whence the straitened cries roll From its terrified flock;
With incendiary grips It loosens a block,
Which smokes and then slips From its place by the shock;
To the surface first sheers,
Then melts, disappears, Like the glacier, the rock! The high priest, full of years, On the burnt site appears,
Whence the others have fled. Lo! his tiara’s caught fire As the furnace burns higher,
And pale, full of dread, See, the hand he would raise To tear his crown from the blaze
Is flaming instead!
Men, women, in crowds Hurry on—the fire shrouds
And blinds all their eyes As, besieging each gate Of these cities of fate To the conscience-struck crowd, In each fiery cloud,
Hell appears in the skies!
IX.
Men say that then, to see his foe’s sad fall As some old prisoner clings to his prison wall, Babel, accomplice of their guilt, was seen O’er the far hills to gaze with vision keen! And as was worked this dispensation strange, A wondrous noise filled the world’s startled range; Reached the dull hearing that deep, direful sound Of their sad tribe who live below the ground.
X.
‘Gainst this pitiless flame who condemned could prevail? Who these walls, burnt and calcined, could venture to scale?
Yet their vile hands they sought to uplift, Yet they cared still to ask from what God, by what law? In their last sad embrace, ‘midst their honor and awe,
Of this mighty volcano the drift. ‘Neath great slabs of marble they hid them in vain, ‘Gainst this everliving fire, God’s own flaming rain!
‘Tis the rash whom God seeks out the first; They call on their gods, who were deaf to their cries, For the punishing flame caused their cold granite eyes
In tears of hot lava to burst! Thus away in the whirlwind did everything pass, The man and the city, the soil and its grass!
God burnt this sad, sterile champaign; Naught living was left of this people destroyed, And the unknown wind which blew over the void,
Each mountain changed into a plain.
XI.
The palm-tree that grows on the rock to this day, Feels its leaf growing yellow, its slight stem decay,
In the blasting and ponderous air; These towns are no more! but to mirror their past, O’er their embers a cold lake spread far and spread fast,
With smoke like a furnace, lies there!
J.N. FAZAKERLEY
PIRATES’ SONG.
(“Nous emmenions en esclavage.”)
[VIII., March, 1828.]
We’re bearing fivescore Christian dogs
To serve the cruel drivers: Some are fair beauties gently born,
And some rough coral-divers. We hardy skimmers of the sea
Are lucky in each sally, And, eighty strong, we send along
The dreaded Pirate Galley.
A nunnery was spied ashore,
We lowered away the cutter, And, landing, seized the youngest nun
Ere she a cry could utter; Beside the creek, deaf to our oars,
She slumbered in green alley, As, eighty strong, we sent along
The dreaded Pirate Galley.
“Be silent, darling, you must come—
The wind is off shore blowing; You only change your prison dull
For one that’s splendid, glowing! His Highness doats on milky cheeks,
So do not make us dally”— We, eighty strong, who send along
The dreaded Pirate Galley.
She sought to flee back to her cell,
And called us each a devil! We dare do aught becomes Old Scratch,
But like a treatment civil, So, spite of buffet, prayers, and calls—
Too late her friends to rally— We, eighty strong, bore her along
Unto the Pirate Galley.
The fairer for her tears profuse,
As dews refresh the flower, She is well worth three purses full,
And will adorn the bower— For vain her vow to pine and die
Thus torn from her dear valley: She reigns, and we still row along
The dreaded Pirate Galley.
THE TURKISH CAPTIVE.
(“Si je n’était captive.”)
[IX., July, 1828.]
Oh! were I not a captive,
I should love this fair countree; Those fields with maize abounding,
This ever-plaintive sea: I’d love those stars unnumbered,
If, passing in the shade, Beneath our walls I saw not
The spahi’s sparkling blade.
I am no Tartar maiden
That a blackamoor of price Should tune my lute and hold to me
My glass of sherbet-ice. Far from these haunts of vices,
In my dear countree, we With sweethearts in the even
May chat and wander free.
But still I love this climate,
Where never wintry breeze Invades, with chilly murmur,
These open lattices; Where rain is warm in summer,
And the insect glossy green, Most like a living emerald,
Shines ‘mid the leafy screen.
With her chapelles fair Smyrna—
A gay princess is she! Still, at her summons, round her
Unfading spring ye see. And, as in beauteous vases,
Bright groups of flowers repose, So, in her gulfs are lying
Her archipelagoes.
I love these tall red turrets;
These standards brave unrolled; And, like an infant’s playthings,
These houses decked with gold. I love forsooth these reveries,
Though sandstorms make me pant, Voluptuously swaying
Upon an elephant.
Here in this fairy palace,
Full of such melodies, Methinks I hear deep murmurs
That in the deserts rise; Soft mingling with the music
The Genii’s voices pour, Amid the air, unceasing,
Around us evermore.
I love the burning odors
This glowing region gives; And, round each gilded lattice,
The trembling, wreathing leaves; And, ‘neath the bending palm-tree,
The gayly gushing spring; And on the snow-white minaret,
The stork with snowier wing.
I love on mossy couch to sing
A Spanish roundelay, And see my sweet companions
Around commingling gay,— A roving band, light-hearted,
In frolicsome array,— Who ‘neath the screening parasols
Dance down the merry day. But more than all enchanting
At night, it is to me, To sit, where winds are sighing,
Lone, musing by the sea; And, on its surface gazing,
To mark the moon so fair, Her silver fan outspreading,
In trembling radiance there.
W.D., Tait’s Edin. Magazine
MOONLIGHT ON THE BOSPHORUS.
(“La lune était sereine.”)
[X., September, 1828.]
Bright shone the merry moonbeams dancing o’er the wave;
At the cool casement, to the evening breeze flung wide,
Leans the Sultana, and delights to watch the tide, With surge of silvery sheen, yon sleeping islets lave.
From her hand, as it falls, vibrates the light guitar.
She listens—hark! that sound that echoes dull and low.
Is it the beat upon the Archipelago Of some long galley’s oar, from Scio bound afar?
Is it the cormorants, whose black wings, one by one,
Cut the blue wave that o’er them breaks in liquid pearls?
Is it some hovering sprite with whistling scream that hurls Down to the deep from yon old tower a loosened stone?
Who thus disturbs the tide near the seraglio?
‘Tis no dark cormorants that on the ripple float,
‘Tis no dull plume of stone—no oars of Turkish boat, With measured beat along the water creeping slow.
‘Tis heavy sacks, borne each by voiceless dusky slaves;
And could you dare to sound the depths of yon dark tide,
Something like human form would stir within its side. Bright shone the merry moonbeams dancing o’er the wave.
JOHN L. O’SULLIVAN.
THE VEIL.
(“Qu’avez-vous, mes frères?”)
[XI., September, 18288.]
“Have you prayed tonight, Desdemona?”
THE SISTERWhat has happened, my brothers? Your spirit to-day
Some secret sorrow damps There’s a cloud on your brow. What has happened? Oh, say, For your eyeballs glare out with a sinister ray
Like the light of funeral lamps. And the blades of your poniards are half unsheathed
In your belt—and ye frown on me! There’s a woe untold, there’s a pang unbreathed
In your bosom, my brothers three!
ELDEST BROTHER.
Gulnara, make answer! Hast thou, since the dawn, To the eye of a stranger thy veil withdrawn?
THE SISTER.
As I came, oh, my brother! at noon—from the bath—
As I came—it was noon, my lords— And your sister had then, as she constantly hath, Drawn her veil close around her, aware that the path
Is beset by these foreign hordes. But the weight of the noonday’s sultry hour Near the mosque was so oppressive That—forgetting a moment the eye of the Giaour—
I yielded to th’ heat excessive.
SECOND BROTHER.
Gulnara, make answer! Whom, then, hast thou seen, In a turban of white and a caftan of green?
THE SISTER.
Nay, he might have been there; but I muflled me so,
He could scarcely have seen my figure.— But why to your sister thus dark do you grow? What words to yourselves do you mutter thus low,
Of “blood” and “an intriguer”? Oh! ye cannot of murder bring down the red guilt
On your souls, my brothers, surely! Though I fear—from the hands that are chafing the hilt,
And the hints you give obscurely.
THIRD BROTHER.
Gulnara, this evening when sank the red sun, Didst thou mark how like blood in descending it shone?
THE SISTER.
Mercy! Allah! have pity! oh, spare!
See! I cling to your knees repenting! Kind brothers, forgive me! for mercy, forbear! Be appeased at the cry of a sister’s despair,
For our mother’s sake relenting. O God! must I die? They are deaf to my cries!
Their sister’s life-blood shedding; They have stabbed me each one—I faint—o’er my eyes
A veil of Death is spreading!
THE BROTHERS.
Gulnara, farewell! take that veil; ‘tis the gift Of thy brothers—a veil thou wilt never lift!
“FATHER PROUT” (FRANK S. MAHONY).
THE FAVORITE SULTANA.
(“N’ai-je pas pour toi, belle
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