IV.
Calculating statesmen, quail;
Proud aristocrat, grow pale;
Savage sounds that deathly song:
Down with tyrants! Down with wrong!
Blindly now they wreak revenge—
How rudely do a mob avenge!
What! coronetted Prince or Peer,
Will not the base-born slavelings fear
Sooth, their cry is somewhat stern:
Aristocrats, à la Lanterne!
Ghastly fruit their lances bear—
Noble heads with streaming hair;
Diadem and kingly crown
Strike the famine-stricken down.
Now, the People's work is done—
On they stride o'er prostrate throne;
Royal blood of King and Queen
Streameth from the guillotine;
Wildly on the people goeth,
Reaping what the noble soweth.
Little dreamed he, prince or peer,
Of who should be his heritor.
Hunger now, at last, is sated
In halls where once it wailed and waited;
Wild Justice fiercely rives the laws
Which failed to right a people's cause.
On that human ocean floweth,
Whither stops it no one knoweth—
Surge the wild waves in their strength
Against all chartered rights at length—
Throne, and King, and Noble fall;
But the People—they hold Carnival!
THE FALL OF THE TYRANTS
A Spanish Ballad, 1492.