O Tempus ferax insanorum, Heu!
Physicked with metaphysics, pamphleteered
Into paroxysms, bruited into brutes.
And metamorphosed into murder, lo
Men lapse to savagery and turn to beasts.
Hell-broth hag-boiled: a mad Theroigne is queen—
Mounts to the brazen throne of Harlotdom,
Queen of the cursed, and flares her cannon-torch.
Watch-wolves, lean-jawed, fore-smelling feast of blood,
In packs on Paris howl from farthest France.
Discord demented bursts the bounds of Dis;
Mad Murder raves and Horror holds her hell.
Hades up-heaves her whelps. In human forms
Up-flare the Furies, serpent-haired and grin
Horrid with bloody jaws. Scaled reptiles crawl
From slum and sewer, slimy, coil on coil—
Danton, dark beast, that builded for himself
A monument of quicksand limed with blood;
Horse-leech Marat, blear-eyed, vile vulture born;
Fair Charlotte's dagger robbed the guillotine!
Black-biled, green-visaged, traitorous Robespierre,
That buzzard-beaked, hawk-taloned octopus
Who played with pale poltroonery of men,
And drank the cup of flattery till he reeled;
Hell's pope uncrowned, immortal for a day.
Tinville, relentless dog of murder-plot—
Doom-judge whose trembling victims were foredoomed;
Maillard who sucked his milk from Murder's dugs,
Twin-whelp to Theroigne, captain of the hags;
Jourdan, red-grizzled mule-son blotched with blood,
Headsman forever "famous-infamous;"
Keen, hag-whelped journalist Camille Desmoulins,
Who with a hundred other of his ilk
Hissed on the hounds and smeared his bread with blood;
Lebon, man-fiend, that vampire-ghoul who drank
Hot blood of headless victims, and compelled
Mothers to view the murder of their babes;
At whose red guillotine, in Arras raised,
The pipe and fiddle played at every fall
Of ghastly head the ribald "Ca Ira;"
And fiends unnamed and nameless brutes untaled.
Petticoat-patriots sans bas, and Sans-culottes,
Rampant in rags and hunger-toothed uproar
Paris the proud. With Jacobin clubs they club
The head of France till all her brains are out.
Hired murder hunts in packs. Men murder-mad
Slay for the love of murder. Gloomy night,
Hiding her stars lest they in pity fall,
Beholds a thousand guiltless, trembling souls—
Men, women, children—forth from prisons flung
In flare of torch and glare of demon eyes,
Among the howling wolves and lazar-hags,
Crying for mercy where no mercy is,
Hewed down in heaps by bloody ax and pike.
From their grim battlements the imps of hell
Indignant hissed and damped their fires with tears;
And Manhood from the watch-towers of the world
Cried in the name of Human Nature—"Hold!"
As well the drifting snail might strive to still
The volcan-heaved, storm-struck, moon-maddened sea.
Blood-frenzied beasts demand their feast of blood.
"Liberty—Equality—Fraternity!"—the cry
Of blood-hounds baying on the track of babes.
Queen innocent beheaded—mother-queen!
And queenly Roland—Nature's queenly queen!
Aye, at the foot of bloody guillotine
She stood a heroine: before her loomed
The Goddess of Liberty—in statue-stone.
Queen Roland saw, and spake the words that ring
Along the centuries—"O Liberty!
What crimes are committed in thy name!"—and died.
And when the headsman raised her severed head
To hell-dogs shouting "Vive la Liberté,"
Godlike disdain still sparkled in her eyes.
Grim Hell herself in pity stood aghast,
Clanged shut her doors and stopped her ears with pitch.
See the wise ruler—father of Brazil,
Who struck the shackles from a million slaves,
Whose reign was peace and love and gentleness,
Despoiled and driven from the land he loves.
See jealous Labor strike the hand that feeds,
And burn the mills that grind his daily bread;
Yea, in blind rage denounce the very laws
That shield his home from Europe's pauperdom.
See the grieved farmer raise his horny hand
And splutter garlic. Hear the demagogues
Fist-maul the wind and weather-cock the crowd,
With brazen foreheads full of empty noise
Out-bellowing the bulls of Bashan; and behold
Shrill, wrinkled Amazons in high harangue
Stamp their flat feet and gnash their toothless gums,
And flaunt their petticoat-flag of "Liberty."
Hear the old bandogs of the Daily Press,
Chained to their party posts, or fetter-free
And running amuck against old party creeds,
On-howl their packs and glory in the fight.
See mangy curs, whose editorial ears
Prick to all winds to catch the popular breeze,
Slang-whanging yelp, and froth and snap and snarl,
And sniff the gutters for their daily food.
And these—are they our prophets and our priests?
Hurra!—Hurra!—Hurra!—for "Liberty!"
Flaunt the red flag and flutter the petticoat;
Ran-tan the drums and let the bugles bray,
The eagle scream and sixty million throats
Sing Yankee-doodle—Yankee-doodle-doo.
The state is sick and every fool a quack
Running with pills and plasters and sure-cures,
And every pill and package labelled Ism.
See Liberty run mad, and Anarchy,
Bearing the torch, the dagger and the bomb
Red-mouthed run riot in her sacred name
Hear mobs of idlers cry—"Equality!
Let all men share alike: divide, divide!"
Butting their heads against the granite rocks
Of Nature and the eternal laws of God.
Pull down the toiler, lift the idler up!
Despoil the frugal, crown the negligent!
Offer rewards to idleness and crime!
And pay a premium for improvidence!
Fools, can your wolfish cries repeal the laws
Of God engraven on the granite hills,
Written in every Wrinkle of the earth,
On every plain, on every mountain-top,—
Nay, blazened o'er all the boundless Universe
On every jewel that sparkles on God's throne?
And can ye rectify God's mighty plan?
O pygmies, can ye measure God himself?
Aye, would ye measure God's almighty power,
Go—crack Earth's bones and heave the granite hills;
Measure the ocean in a drinking-cup;
Measure Eternity by the town-clock;
Nay, with a yard-stick measure the Universe:
Measure for measure. Measure God by man!
"Fools to the midmost marrow of your bones!"
O buzzing flies and gnats! Ye cannot strike
One little atom from God's Universe,
Or warp the laws of Nature by a hair!
His loving eye sees through all evil good.
Man's life is but a breath; but lo with Him
To-day, to-morrow, yesterday, are one
One in the cycle of eternal time
That hath beginning none, nor any end.
The Earth revolving round her sire, the Sun,
Measures the flying year of mortal man,
But who shall measure God's eternal year?
The unbegotten, everlasting God;
Unmade, eternal, all-pervading power;
Center and source of all things, high and low,
Maker and master of the Universe—
Ah, nay, the mighty Universe itself!
All things in nature bear God's signature
So plainly writ that he who runs may read.
We know not what life is; how may we know
Death—what it is, or what may lie beyond?
Whoso forgets his God forgets himself.
Let me not blindly judge my brother man:
There is but one just judge; there is but one
Who knows the hearts of men. Him let us praise—
Not with blind prayer, or idle, sounding psalms—
But let us daily in our daily works,
Praise God by righteous deeds and brother-love.
Go forth into the forest and observe—
For men believe their eyes and doubt their ears—
The creeping vine, the shrub, the lowly bush,
The dwarfed and stunted trees, the bent and bowed,
And here and there a lordly oak or elm,
And o'er them all a tall and princely pine.
All struggle upward, but the many fail;
The low dwarfed by the shadows of the great,
The stronger basking in the genial sun.
Observe the myriad fishes of the seas—
The mammoths and the minnows of the deep.
Behold the eagle and the little wren,
The condor on his cliff, the pigeon-hawk,
The teal, the coot, the broad-winged albatross.
Turn to the beasts in forest and in field—
The lion, the lynx, the mammoth and the mouse,
The sheep, the goat, the bullock and the horse,
The fierce gorillas and the chattering apes—
Progenitors and prototypes of man.
Not only differences in genera find,
But grades in every kind and every class.
I would not doom to serfdom or to toil
One race, one caste, one class, or any man:
Give every honest man an honest chance;
Protect alike the rich man and the poor;
Let not the toiler live upon a crust
While Croesus' bread is buttered on both sides.
O people's king and shepherd, thronèd Law,
Strike down the monsters of Monopoly.
Lift up thy club, O mighty Hercules!
Behold thy "Labors" yet unfinished are:
Tear off thy Nessus shirt and bare thine arms.
The Numean lion fattens on our flocks;
The Lernean Hydra coils around our farms,
Our towns, our mills, our mines, our factories;
The triple monster Geryon lives again,
Grown quadruple, and over all our plains
And thousand hills his fattening oxen feed.
Stymphalean buzzards ravage round our fields;
The Augean stables reeking stench the land;
The hundred-headed monster Cerberus,
That throttled Greece and ravaged hapless France,
Hath broke from hell and howls for human blood.
Lift up thy knotted club, O Hercules!
Strike swift and sure: crush down the Hydra's heads;
Throttle the Numean lion: strike! nor spare
The monster Geryon or the buzzard-beaks.
Clean the Augean stables if thou can'st;
But hurl the hundred-headed monster down
Headlong to Hades: chain him; make thee sure
He shall not burst the bonds of hell again.
To you, O chosen makers of the laws,
The nation looks—and shall it look in vain?
Will ye sit idle, or in idle wind
Blow out your zeal, and crack your party whips,
Or drivel dotage, while the crisis cries—
While all around the dark horizon loom
Clouds thunder-capped that bode a hurricane?
Sleep ye as slept the "Notables" of France,
While under them an hundred Ætnas hissed
And spluttered sulphur, gathering for the shock?
Be ye our Hercules—and Lynceus-eyed:
Still ye the storm or ere the storm begin—
Ere "Liberty" take Justice by the throat,
And run moon-mad a Malay murder-muck,
Throttle the "Trusts", and crush the coils combined
That crack our bones and fatten on our fields.
Strike down the hissing heads of Anarchy:
Strike swift and hard, nor parley with the fiend
Mothered of hell and father of all fiends—
Fell monster with an hundred bloody mouths,
And every mouth an hundred hissing tongues,
And every tongue drips venom from his fangs.
Protect the toiling millions by just laws;
Let honest labor find its sure reward;
Let willing hands find work and honest bread.
So frame the laws that every honest man
May find his home protected and his craft.
Let Liberty and Order walk hand in hand
With Justice: happy Trio! let them rule.
Put up the bars: bar out the pauper swarms
Alike from Asia's huts and Europe's hives.
Let charity begin at home. In vain
Will we bar out the swarms from Europe's hives
And Asia's countless lepers, if our ports
Are free to all the products of their hands.
Put up the bars: bar out the pauper hordes;
Bar out their products that compete with ours:
Give honest toil at home an honest chance:
Build up our own and keep our coin at home.
In vain our mines pour forth their wealth of gold
And silver, if by every ship it sail
For London, Paris, Birmingham or Berlin.