ODE ON THE PROCLAMATION OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC. STROPHE I. WITH Songs and crying and sounds of acclamations, Lo, the flame risen, the fire that falls in showers! for the word is out among the nations: Hark; Look; for the light is up upon the hours: O fears, O shames, O many tribulations, Yours were all yesterdays, but this day ours. Strong were your bonds linked fast with lamentations, With groans and tears built into walls and towers; Strong were your works and wonders of high stations, Your forts blood-based, and rampires of your powers: Lo now the last of divers desolations, The hand of time, that gathers hosts like flowers; Time, that fills up and pours out generations; Time, at whose breath confounded empire cowers. STR. 2. What are these moving in the dawn's red gloom? What is she waited on by dread and doom, Ill ministers of morning, bondsmen born of night? If that head veiled and bowed be morning's head, If she come walking between doom and dread, Who shall rise up with song and dance before her sight? |