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Apparent Failure
NO, for I ’ll save it! Seven years since, | |
| I passed through Paris, stopped a day | |
| To see the baptism of your Prince; | |
| Saw, made my bow, and went my way: | |
| Walking the heat and headache off, | 5 |
| I took the Seine-side, you surmise, | |
| Thought of the Congress, Gortschakoff, | |
| Cavour’s appeal and Buol’s replies, | |
| So sauntered till—what met my eyes? | |
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| Only the Doric little Morgue! | 10 |
| The dead-house where you show your drowned: | |
| Petrarch’s Vaucluse makes proud the Sorgue, | |
| Your Morgue has made the Seine renowned. | |
| One pays one’s debt in such a case; | |
| I plucked up heart and entered,—stalked, | 15 |
| Keeping a tolerable face | |
| Compared with some whose cheeks were chalked: | |
| Let them! No Briton ’s to be balked! | |
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| First came the silent gazers; next, | |
| A screen of glass, we ’re thankful for; | 20 |
| Last, the sight’s self, the sermon’s text, | |
| The three men who did most abhor | |
| Their life in Paris yesterday, | |
| So killed themselves: and now, enthroned | |
| Each on his copper couch, they lay | 25 |
| Fronting me, waiting to be owned. | |
| I thought, and think, their sin ’s atoned. | |
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| Poor men, God made, and all for that! | |
| The reverence struck me; o’er each head | |
| Religiously was hung its hat, | 30 |
| Each coat dripped by the owner’s bed, | |
| Sacred from touch: each had his berth, | |
| His bounds, his proper place of rest, | |
| Who last night tenanted on earth | |
| Some arch, where twelve such slept abreast,— | 35 |
| Unless the plain asphalte seemed best. | |
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| How did it happen, my poor boy? | |
| You wanted to be Buonaparte | |
| And have the Tuileries for toy, | |
| And could not, so it broke your heart? | 40 |
| You, old one by his side, I judge, | |
| Were, red as blood, a socialist, | |
| A leveller! Does the Empire grudge | |
| You ’ve gained what no Republic missed? | |
| Be quiet, and unclench your fist! | 45 |
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| And this,—why, he was red in vain, | |
| Or black,—poor fellow that is blue! | |
| What fancy was it turned your brain? | |
| O, women were the prize for you! | |
| Money gets women, cards and dice | 50 |
| Get money, and ill-luck gets just | |
| The copper couch and one clear nice | |
| Cool squirt of water o’er your bust, | |
| The right thing to extinguish lust! | |
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| It ’s wiser being good than bad; | 55 |
| It ’s safer being meek than fierce: | |
| It ’s fitter being sane than mad. | |
| My own hope is, a sun will pierce | |
| The thickest cloud earth ever stretched; | |
| That, after Last, returns the First, | 60 |
| Though a wide compass round be fetched; | |
| That what began best, can’t end worst, | |
| Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst. | |
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