Written by
Les Murray |
Mid-9th century
Good-looking young man
in your Crimean shirt
with your willow shield
up, as if to face spears,
you're inside their men's Law,
one church they do obey;
they'll remember you were here.
Keep fending off their casts.
Don't come out of character.
Like you they suspect
idiosyncrasy of witchcraft.
Above all, don't get out
too easily, and have to leave here
where all missiles are just leather
and come from one direction.
Keep it noble.
Keep it light.
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Written by
Victor Hugo |
("Qui leur eût dit l'austère destineé?")
{II. v., November, 1836.}
Who then, to them{1} had told the Future's story?
Or said that France, low bowed before their glory,
One day would mindful be
Of them and of their mournful fate no more,
Than of the wrecks its waters have swept o'er
The unremembering sea?
That their old Tuileries should see the fall
Of blazons from its high heraldic hall,
Dismantled, crumbling, prone;{2}
Or that, o'er yon dark Louvre's architrave{3}
A Corsican, as yet unborn, should grave
An eagle, then unknown?
That gay St. Cloud another lord awaited,
Or that in scenes Le Nôtre's art created
For princely sport and ease,
Crimean steeds, trampling the velvet glade,
Should browse the bark beneath the stately shade
Of the great Louis' trees?
Fraser's Magazine.
{Footnote 1: The young princes, afterwards Louis XVIII. and Charles X.}
{Footnote 2: The Tuileries, several times stormed by mobs, was so
irreparably injured by the Communists that, in 1882, the Paris Town
Council decided that the ruins should be cleared away.}
{Footnote 3: After the Eagle and the Bee superseded the Lily-flowers,
the Third Napoleon's initial "N" flourished for two decades, but has
been excised or plastered over, the words "National Property" or
"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" being cut in the stone profusely.}
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