Wanderlieder.

Sunrise In The Place De La Concorde. (Paris, August 1865.)     I stand at the break of day     In the Champs Elysees.     The tremulous shafts of dawning,     As they shoot o'er the Tuileries early,     Strike Luxor's cold grey spire,     And wild in the light of the morning     With their marble manes on fire,     Ramp the white Horses of Marly.     But the Place of Concord lies     Dead hushed 'neath the ashy skies.     And the Cities sit in council     With sleep in their wide stone eyes.     I see the mystic plain     Where the army of spectres slain     In the Emperor's life-long war     March on with unsounding tread     To trumpets whose voice is dead.     Their spectral chief still leads them, -     The ghostly flash of his sword     Like a comet through mist shines far, -     And the noiseless host is poured,     For the gendarme never heeds them,     Up the long dim road where thundered     The army of Italy onward     Through the great pale Arch of the Star!     The spectre army fades     Far up the glimmering hill,     But, vaguely lingering still,     A group of shuddering shades     Infects the pallid air,     Growing dimmer as day invades     The hush of the dusky square.     There is one that seems a King,     As if the ghost of a Crown     Still shadowed his jail-bleached hair;     I can hear the guillotine ring,     As its regicide note rang there,     When he laid his tired life down     And grew brave in his last despair.     And a woman frail and fair     Who weeps at leaving a world     Of love and revel and sin     In the vast Unknown to be hurled;     (For life was wicked and sweet     With kings at her small white feet!)     And one, every inch a Queen,     In life and in death a Queen,     Whose blood baptized the place,     In the days of madness and fear, -     Her shade has never a peer     In majesty and grace.     Murdered and murderers swarm;     Slayers that slew and were slain,     Till the drenched place smoked with the rain     That poured in a torrent warm, -     Till red as the Riders of Edom     Were splashed the white garments of Freedom     With the wash of the horrible storm!     And Liberty's hands were not clean     In the day of her pride unchained,     Her royal hands were stained     With the life of a King and Queen;     And darker than that with the blood     Of the nameless brave and good     Whose blood in witness clings     More damning than Queens' and Kings'.     Has she not paid it dearly?     Chained, watching her chosen nation     Grinding late and early     In the mills of usurpation?     Have not her holy tears,     Flowing through shameful years,     Washed the stains from her tortured hands?     We thought so when God's fresh breeze,     Blowing over the sleeping lands,     In 'Forty-Eight waked the world,     And the Burgher-King was hurled     From that palace behind the trees.     As Freedom with eyes aglow     Smiled glad through her childbirth pain,     How was the mother to know     That her woe and travail were vain?     A smirking servant smiled     When she gave him her child to keep;     Did she know he would strangle the child     As it lay in his arms asleep?     Liberty's cruellest shame!     She is stunned and speechless yet,     In her grief and bloody sweat     Shall we make her trust her blame?     The treasure of 'Forty-Eight     A lurking jail-bird stole,     She can but watch and wait     As the swift sure seasons roll.     And when in God's good hour     Comes the time of the brave and true,     Freedom again shall rise     With a blaze in her awful eyes     That shall wither this robber-power     As the sun now dries the dew.     This Place shall roar with the voice     Of the glad triumphant people,     And the heavens be gay with the chimes     Ringing with jubilant noise     From every clamorous steeple     The coming of better times.     And the dawn of Freedom waking     Shall fling its splendours far     Like the day which now is breaking     On the great pale Arch of the Star,     And back o'er the town shall fly,     While the joy-bells wild are ringing,     To crown the Glory springing     From the Column of July!