******
Here is a roofless palace, where gape
Casements in rows without form or shape:
A sordid ruin, whose swift decay
Speaks of that terrible morning in May
When the whole fair city was blood and fire,
And the black smoke of ruin rose higher and higher,
And through the still streets, 'neath the broad Spring sun,
Everywhere murder and rapine were done;
Women lurking, with torch in hand,
Evil eyed, sullen, who soon should stand
Before the sharp bayonets, dripping with blood,
And be pierced through and through, or shot dead where they stood.
******
This is the brand-new Hôtel de Ville,
Where six hundred wretches met death in the fire;
Ringed round with a pitiless hedge of steel,
Not one might escape that swift vengeance. To-day
The ruin, the carnage, are clean swept away;
And the sumptuous façades, and the high roofs aspire,
And, upon the broad square, the white palace face
Looks down with a placid and meaningless grace,
Ignoring the bloodshed, the struggle, the sorrow,
The doom that has been, and that may be to-morrow,
The hidden hatred, the mad endeavour,
The strife that has been and shall be for ever.
******
Here rise the twin-towers of Notre Dame,
Through siege, and revolt, and ruin the same.
See the people in crowds pressing onward, slowly,
Along the dark aisles to the altar holy—
The altar, to-day, wrapt in mourning and gloom,
Since He whom they worship lies dead in the tomb.
There, by a tiny acolyte tended,
A round-cheeked child in his cassock white,
Lies the tortured figure to which are bended
The knees of the passers who gaze on the sight,
And the people fall prostrate, and kiss and mourn
The fair dead limbs which the nails have torn.
And the passionate music comes from the quire,
Full of soft chords of a yearning pity
The mournful voices accordant aspire
To the far-off gates of the Heavenly City;
And the soft clear alto, soaring high and higher,
Mounts now a surging fountain, now a heavenward fire.