Got drunk sometimes, and stole his neighbor’s goods;
Whom will the Sower follow ne’ertheless,
And as he cuts the boundless harvest, bless.
Or let us try the following description of the Hotel de Ville in the French Revolution:
‘O evening sun of July! how at this hour thy beams fall slant on reapers amid peaceful woody fields; on old women spinning in cottages; on ships far out on the silent main; on Balls at the Orangerie of Versailles, where high-rouged dames of the palace are even now dancing with double-jacketted Hussar officers; and also on this roaring Hell-porch of a Hotel de Ville. Babel-tower, with the confusion of tongues, were not Bedlam added with the conflagration of thoughts, was no type of it. One forest of distracted steel bristles endless in front of an Electoral Committee.’
French Revolution: Book v., Chap. vii.
SONNET II.—THE HOTEL DE VILLE.
O evening sun of most serene July!
How at this hour thy slant refulgence pours
On reapers working in the open sky,