| |
| NOSTRADAMUS, wizard old, in his mantle fringed with gold, | |
| Came to chide the wicked king; | |
| Threw into his foolish lap Normandy’s red cancelled map, | |
| Told him of his woes the spring. | |
| Ludovicos the Wicked spurned, as his beard he champed and churned, | 5 |
| The gold footstool at his feet; | |
| Nostradamus, with a frown, broke in two the royal crown, | |
| Crying, “Fool, thy fate is meet!” | |
| |
| Then the king with angry eyes, and a face of many dyes, | |
| Lifted up his ivory rod; | 10 |
| Smote the old man, bent and weak, on his thin and withered cheek. | |
| “Is our juggler turned a god?” | |
| Nostradamus at the gates mounts his horse that champing waits,— | |
| What a red scar on his face!— | |
| Rides through Paris hot in anger, with an iron din and clangor, | 15 |
| Heaping curses on the place. | |
| |
| “Murrain and red blister-blight all thy burghers spot and bite! | |
| Lightnings shrivel up the dead! | |
| Hear me, beings of the air, wheresoever now ye fare,— | |
| Melt the gold crown from his head!” | 20 |
| As the angry wizard spoke, witch-fogs rose as thick as smoke, | |
| Drowning all the roofs and spires; | |
| Through these mists like arrows passed, hot and eager, fierce and fast, | |
| Lurid shafts of sudden fires. | |
| |
| This dark necromantic spell was, I ’m certain, heard in hell, | 25 |
| For an earthquake shook the street; | |
| At the clatter of his hoofs spectres danced upon the roofs, | |
| Voices answered deep and frequent underneath our trembling feet. | |
| “Water-demons, livid blue, river rapids looking through, | |
| Drive your corpses down the fords! | 30 |
| Mine and Salamander kings, with your fiery throbbing wings, | |
| Smite with fevers as with swords!” | |
| |
| Tempests shook the double towers, where the bells proclaimed the hours | |
| O’er the roofs of Notre Dame; | |
| Shooting stars fell sheaf by sheaf, like the autumn’s dropping leaf, | 35 |
| Raining as the darkness came. | |
| Then the listening weathercocks, perched above the turret clocks, | |
| Clapped their golden wings and crowed; | |
| Up the stone king on the bridge leaped from frozen saddle-ridge, | |
| Where for centuries he rode. | 40 |
| |
| When the abbey door he past, spurring hot and fierce and fast, | |
| All the blood-red royal martyrs in the golden sheets of glass | |
| At the eastern window glared,—even Pontius Pilate stared, | |
| Seeing Nostradamus pass. | |
| Withered bishop on his tomb, praying for the knell of doom, | 45 |
| Rose erect, and slowly lifted crumbling grave-clothes from his face; | |
| Cross-legged old crusading knight sprang impatient for the fight, | |
| With the devil-army crowding to the Jewish battle-place. | |
| |
| Though it was the midnight time, just as if at chilly prime, | |
| All the bells began to clash; | 50 |
| Every giant beat his mace on the well-worn hollow place | |
| With an anger mad and rash; | |
| Every clock began to strike any hour it seemed to like, | |
| All the wheels were on the buzz; | |
| Every hand was on the move, every weight ran in its groove, | 55 |
| Fit to chafe the man of Uz. | |
| |
| As he passed the river-arch where the sentries freeze or parch, | |
| All the silver fish stared there, | |
| Looking up with wondering mouth, whether you gazed north or south, | |
| Gaping for both speech and air. | 60 |
| As he threads the city gate, where the stone gods sit and wait, | |
| Down they hurled their marble globes. | |
| Have you seen—has any one—how the eighteen-pounders run?— | |
| Thistle-down against his robes. | |
| |
| Watch-dogs’ loud and frightened howls woke the eager-mousing owls | 65 |
| On the roof and in the tower; | |
| Whizz! they flew in frightened rout, from the church-bells round about, | |
| Where with hoots they count the hour. | |
| With a shrieking yell and bark every hound awoke the dark, | |
| Tugging fierce at kennel-chain; | 70 |
| Yellow-toothed and carrion rats woke the miller’s sleeping cats | |
| By their squeaking in the grain. | |
| |
| Splashing storms with bitter pelt on the barred-up windows melt, | |
| Scaring sleeping citizen; | |
| Nightmares, many-hoofed and red, trod and trampled on the bed | 75 |
| Of the beggar in his den, | |
| Woke him by a dying scream from a cruel suffering dream: | |
| Many naked rose to pray. | |
| Comets with a crimson glare blazed across the troubled air, | |
| Till the night was bright as day. | 80 |
| |
| Ay! that very night there fell, long before the matin-bell, | |
| Wrath and curses dire and dark; | |
| Thunder, with its blasting boom, split the blessed martyr’s tomb; | |
| Lightnings splintered on St. Mark; | |
| Fire ran fast along the ground, darkness dismally profound | 85 |
| Covered Paris,—pomp and pride; | |
| Children, though unborn, might rue that dread curse that blighting flew;— | |
| Curse not wizards when they ride! | |
| |
| But a year had passed away, just a year,—the very day | |
| And the doom had come indeed: | 90 |
| Wicked Louis, gashed and red, lay upon his battle-bed, | |
| Careless of his realms that bleed. | |
| Now the moral of my tale: Let the wise man never fail | |
| To respect a wizard’s age, | |
| Never pull his reverend hair, never mock him with a stare: | 95 |
| Dreadful is the wizard’s rage. | |
| |
