Hurry on, ye postillions, so royally paid,
That suspect not a King and a Queen!
Though ye never have heard in the course of your trade
Of a thing that the doctors of Paris have made,
Of a thing that they call Guillotine!
Hurry on to the chopper-shaped square of Varennes
Where your fellow-postillions await!
Hurry on! hurry on, ye dull whip-cracking men!
For each stride that ye take, there is one who takes ten,
And who gallops like Death and like Fate!
He caught sight of a face in the dark carriage-hood
As ye rolled from his door and were gone,
And he looked with a closeness that boded no good
At the crumpled bank-note where that face graven stood—
Hurry on! hurry on! hurry on!
There were clouds near the moon, and they girt her about
As if trying to screen and to save,
And the darkness one moment filled Drouet with doubt;
But she baffled them all and shone brilliantly out
To abet with the light that she gave.
And the stems of the corn flashed metallic and bright
And like bayonets distantly blue,
And the breeze-rippled patches of grain in the light
Looked like distant battalions restrained from the fight
That a thrill of impatience runs through.
But the patches of grain grew more scanty anon,
And the road grew more hard to discern;
And they entered the lonely dark woods of Argonne
Where the moon through the branches could ill help them on,
And they trampled on brushwood and fern.
As they galloped each oak with its black knotty arm
Seemed to grab at the two like a claw;
While the air seemed all full of destruction and harm,
And the one who rode second felt vaguely alarm
At each shadow and shape that he saw.
But the other dashed on, as with hounds on the scent
In his thundering, thundering speed;
Giving neither a thought to his horse nearly spent
Nor a look to his comrade, but solely intent
On a prey that was royal indeed.
Did no angel of life, as he spurred yet more fast,
Cry, “O God, for a slip or a stumble
That shall save from the block the heads sinking at last
Into sleep, now that fear of pursuers is past,
And the heads of a many more humble!
“O Thou God for a doubt that shall bring to a stop,
For a stone in the shoe to retard,
Or more heads in the basket of sawdust will drop
Than the bunches of grapes that the vintagers lop
On a day that their labour is hard;
“And the fields will be lashed not by tempests of rain,
But by tempests of iron and lead;
And manured year by year with fresh blood all in vain,
And each summer will bring not a harvest of grain,
But a harvest of cripples and dead;