1. ۱1
2. ۲A GREAT year and place;
3. ۳A harsh, discordant, natal scream out-sounding, to touch the mother’s heart closer
4. ۴ than
5. ۵ any yet.
6. ۶
7. ۷I walk’d the shores of my Eastern Sea,
8. ۸Heard over the waves the little voice,
9. ۹Saw the divine infant, where she woke, mournfully wailing, amid the roar of cannon,
10. ۱۰ curses,
11. ۱۱ shouts, crash of falling buildings;
12. ۱۲Was not so sick from the blood in the gutters running—nor from the single corpses,
13. ۱۳ nor
14. ۱۴ those in heaps, nor those borne away in the tumbrils;
15. ۱۵Was not so desperate at the battues of death—was not so shock’d at the repeated
16. ۱۶ fusillades of the guns.
17. ۱۷
18. ۱۸2
19. ۱۹Pale, silent, stern, what could I say to that long-accrued retribution?
20. ۲۰Could I wish humanity different?
21. ۲۱Could I wish the people made of wood and stone?
22. ۲۲Or that there be no justice in destiny or time?
23. ۲۳
24. ۲۴3
25. ۲۵O Liberty! O mate for me!
26. ۲۶Here too the blaze, the grape-shot and the axe, in reserve, to fetch them out in case of
27. ۲۷ need;
28. ۲۸Here too, though long represt, can never be destroy’d;
29. ۲۹Here too could rise at last, murdering and extatic;
30. ۳۰Here too demanding full arrears of vengeance.
31. ۳۱
32. ۳۲4
33. ۳۳Hence I sign this salute over the sea,
34. ۳۴And I do not deny that terrible red birth and baptism,
35. ۳۵But remember the little voice that I heard wailing—and wait with perfect trust, no
36. ۳۶ matter
37. ۳۷ how long;
38. ۳۸And from to-day, sad and cogent, I maintain the bequeath’d cause, as for all lands,
39. ۳۹And I send these words to Paris with my love,
40. ۴۰And I guess some chansonniers there will understand them,
41. ۴۱For I guess there is latent music yet in France—floods of it;
42. ۴۲O I hear already the bustle of instruments—they will soon be drowning all that would
43. ۴۳ interrupt them;
44. ۴۴O I think the east wind brings a triumphal and free march,
45. ۴۵It reaches hither—it swells me to joyful madness,
46. ۴۶I will run transpose it in words, to justify it,
47. ۴۷I will yet sing a song for you, MA FEMME.