Poems

MARION (smiling.) You're strange, and yet I love you thus.

DIDIER.                     You love me?
Beware, nor with light lips utter that word.
You love me! – know you what it is to love
With love that is the life-blood in one's veins,
The vital air we breathe, a love long-smothered,
Smouldering in silence, kindling, burning, blazing,
And purifying in its growth the soul.
A love that from the heart eats every passion
But its sole self; love without hope or limit,
Deep love that will outlast all happiness;
Speak, speak; is such the love you bear me?

MARION.                                      Truly.

DIDIER. Ha! but you do not know how I love you!
The day that first I saw you, the dark world
Grew shining, for your eyes lighted my gloom.
Since then, all things have changed; to me you are
Some brightest, unknown creature from the skies.
This irksome life, 'gainst which my heart rebelled,
Seems almost fair and pleasant; for, alas!
Till I knew you wandering, alone, oppressed,
I wept and struggled, I had never loved.

    FANNY KEMBLE-BUTLER.

THE FIRST BLACK FLAG

("Avez-vous oui dire?")

{LES BURGRAVES, Part I., March, 1843.}

JOB. Hast thou ne'er heard men say
That, in the Black Wood, 'twixt Cologne and Spire,
Upon a rock flanked by the towering mountains,
A castle stands, renowned among all castles?
And in this fort, on piles of lava built,
A burgrave dwells, among all burgraves famed?
Hast heard of this wild man who laughs at laws —
Charged with a thousand crimes – for warlike deeds
Renowned – and placed under the Empire's ban
By the Diet of Frankfort; by the Council
Of Pisa banished from the Holy Church;
Reprobate, isolated, cursed – yet still
Unconquered 'mid his mountains and in will;
The bitter foe of the Count Palatine
And Treves' proud archbishop; who has spurned
For sixty years the ladder which the Empire
Upreared to scale his walls? Hast heard that he
Shelters the brave – the flaunting rich man strips —
Of master makes a slave? That here, above
All dukes, aye, kings, eke emperors – in the eyes
Of Germany to their fierce strife a prey,
He rears upon his tower, in stern defiance,
A signal of appeal to the crushed people,
A banner vast, of Sorrow's sable hue,
Snapped by the tempest in its whirlwind wrath,
So that kings quiver as the jades at whips?
Hast heard, he touches now his hundredth year —
And that, defying fate, in face of heaven,
On his invincible peak, no force of war
Uprooting other holds – nor powerful Cæsar —
Nor Rome – nor age, that bows the pride of man —
Nor aught on earth – hath vanquished, or subdued,
Or bent this ancient Titan of the Rhine,
The excommunicated Job?

    Democratic Review.

THE SON IN OLD AGE

("Ma Regina, cette noble figure.")

{LES BURGRAVES, Part II.}

Thy noble face, Regina, calls to mind
My poor lost little one, my latest born.
He was a gift from God – a sign of pardon —
That child vouchsafed me in my eightieth year!
I to his little cradle went, and went,
And even while 'twas sleeping, talked to it.
For when one's very old, one is a child!
Then took it up and placed it on my knees,
And with both hands stroked down its soft, light hair —
Thou wert not born then – and he would stammer
Those pretty little sounds that make one smile!
And though not twelve months old, he had a mind.
He recognized me – nay, knew me right well,
And in my face would laugh – and that child-laugh,
Oh, poor old man! 'twas sunlight to my heart.
I meant him for a soldier, ay, a conqueror,
And named him George. One day – oh, bitter thought!
The child played in the fields. When thou art mother,
Ne'er let thy children out of sight to play!
The gypsies took him from me – oh, for what?
Perhaps to kill him at a witch's rite.
I weep! – now, after twenty years – I weep
As if 'twere yesterday. I loved him so!