The Sisters' Tragedy, with Other Poems, Lyrical and Dramatic. Aldrich Thomas Bailey

red hands at her throat—a piteous sight.

        Then the new Caesar, stricken with affright

        At his own daring, shrunk from public gaze

        In the Elysee, and had lost the day

        But that around him flocked his birds of prey,

        Sharp-beaked, voracious, hungry for the deed.

        'Twixt hope and fear behold great Caesar hang!

        Meanwhile, methinks, a ghostly laughter rang

        Through the rotunda of the Invalides.

II

        What if the boulevards, at set of sun,

        Reddened, but not with sunset's kindly glow?

        What if from quai and square the murmured woe

        Swept heavenward, pleadingly? The prize was won,

        A kingling made and Liberty undone.

        No Emperor, this, like him awhile ago,

        But his Name's shadow; that one struck the blow

        Himself, and sighted the street-sweeping gun!

        This was a man of tortuous heart and brain,

        So warped he knew not his own point of view—

        The master of a dark, mysterious smile.

        And there he plotted, by the storied Seine

        And in the fairy gardens of St. Cloud,

        The Sphinx that puzzled Europe, for awhile.

III

        I see him as men saw him once—a face

        Of true Napoleon pallor; round the eyes

        The wrinkled care; mustache spread pinion-wise,

        Pointing his smile with odd sardonic grace

        As wearily he turns him in his place,

        And bends before the hoarse Parisian cries—

        Then vanishes, with glitter of gold-lace

        And trumpets blaring to the patient skies.

        Not thus he vanished later! On his path

        The Furies waited for the hour and man,

        Foreknowing that they waited not in vain.

        Then fell the day, O day of dreadful wrath!

        Bow down in shame, O crimson-girt Sedan!

        Weep, fair Alsace! weep, loveliest Lorraine!

        So mused I, sitting underneath the trees

        In that old garden of the Tuileries,

        Watching the dust of twilight sifting down

        Through chestnut boughs just toucht with autumn's brown—

        Not twilight yet, but that illusive bloom

        Which holds before the deep-etched shadows come;

        For still the garden stood in golden mist,

        Still, like a river of molten amethyst,

        The Seine slipt through its spans of fretted stone,

        And, near the grille that once fenced in a throne,

        The fountains still unbraided to the day

        The unsubstantial silver of their spray.

        A spot to dream in, love in, waste one's hours!

        Temples and palaces, and gilded towers,

        And fairy terraces!—and yet, and yet

        Here in her woe came Marie Antoinette,

        Came sweet Corday, Du Barry with shrill cry,

        Not learning from her betters how to die!

        Here, while the Nations watched with bated breath,

        Was held the saturnalia of Red Death!

        For where that slim Egyptian shaft uplifts

        Its point to catch the dawn's and sunset's drifts

        Of various gold, the busy Headsman stood. . . .

        Place de la Concorde—no, the Place of Blood!

        And all so peaceful now! One cannot bring

        Imagination to accept the thing.

        Lies, all of it! some dreamer's wild romance—

        High-hearted, witty, laughter-loving France!

        In whose brain was it that the legend grew

        Of Maenads shrieking in this avenue,

        Of watch-fires burning, Famine standing guard,

        Of long-speared Uhlans in that palace-yard!

        What ruder sound this soft air ever smote

        Than a bird's twitter or a bugle's note?

        What darker crimson ever splashed these walks

        Than that of rose-leaves dropping from the stalks?

        And yet—what means that charred and broken wall,

        That sculptured marble, splintered, like to fall,

        Looming among the trees there? . . . And you say

        This happened, as it were, but yesterday?

        And here the Commune stretched a barricade,

        And there the final desperate stand was made?

        Such things have been? How all things change and fade!

        How little lasts in this brave world below!

        Love dies; hate cools; the Caesars come and go;

        Gaunt Hunter fattens, and the weak grow strong.

        Even Republics are not here for long!

        Ah, who can tell what hour may bring the doom,

        The lighted torch, the tocsin's heavy boom!

      IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY

      "The Southern Transept, hardly known by any other name but Poet's Corner."

      DEAN STANLEY.

        TREAD softly here; the sacredest of tombs

        Are those that hold your Poets. Kings and queens

        Are facile accidents of Time and Chance.

        Chance sets them on the heights, they climb not there!

        But he who from the darkling mass of men

        Is on the wing of heavenly thought upborne

        To finer ether, and becomes a voice

        For all the voiceless, God anointed him:

        His name shall be a star, his grave a shrine.

        Tread softly here, in silent reverence tread.

        Beneath those marble cenotaphs and urns

        Lies richer dust than ever nature hid

        Packed in the mountain's adamantine heart,

        Or slyly wrapt in unsuspected sand—

        The dross men toil for, and oft stain the soul.

        How vain and all ignoble seems that greed

        To