Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. IV. The Nineteenth Century: Wordsworth to Rossetti
Robert Southey (1774–1843)Ode, Written During the Negociations with Buonaparte
When God hath given deliverance to the oppress’d,
And to the injured power?
Who counsels peace, when Vengeance like a flood
Rolls on, no longer now to be repress’d;
When innocent blood
From the four corners of the world cries out
For justice upon one accursed head;
When Freedom hath her holy banner spread
Over all nations, now in one just cause
United; when with one sublime accord
Europe throws off the yoke abhorr’d,
And Loyalty and Faith and Ancient Laws
Follow the avenging sword!
If this heroic land,
False to her feelings and unspotted fame,
Hold out the olive to the Tyrant’s hand!
Woe to the world, if Buonaparte’s throne
Be suffer’d still to stand!
For by what names shall Right and Wrong be known,..
What new and courtly phrases must we feign
For Falsehood, Murder, and all monstrous crimes,
If that perfidious Corsican maintain
Still his detested reign,
And France, who yearns even now to break her chain,
Beneath his iron rule be left to groan?
No! by the innumerable dead
Whose blood hath for his lust of power been shed,
Death only can for his foul deeds atone;
That peace which Death and Judgment can bestow,
That peace be Buonaparte’s .. that alone!
Or from the Leopard shall her spots depart,
Than this man change his old flagitious heart.
Have ye not seen him in the balance weighed,
And there found wanting?—On the stage of blood
Foremost the resolute adventurer stood;
And when, by many a battle won,
He placed upon his brow the crown,
Curbing delirious France beneath his sway,
Then, like Octavius in old time,
Fair name might he have handed down,
Effacing many a stain of former crime.
Fool! should he cast away that bright renown!
Fool! the redemption proffer’d should he lose!
When Heaven such grace vouchsafed him that the way
To Good and Evil lay
Before him, which to choose.
For all too long in blood had he been nurst,
And ne’er was earth with verier tyrant curst.
Bold man and bad,
Remorseless, godless, full of fraud and lies,
And black with murders and with perjuries,
Himself in Hell’s whole panoply he clad;
No law but his own headstrong will he knew,
No counsellor but his own wicked heart.
From evil thus portentous strength he drew,
And trampled under foot all human ties,
All holy laws, all natural charities.
Disgraced thou art to all succeeding times;
Rapine, and blood, and fire have mark’d thy way,
All loathsome, all unutterable crimes.
A curse is on thee, France! from far and wide
It hath gone up to Heaven; all lands have cried
For vengeance upon thy detested head;
All nations curse thee, France! for wheresoe’er
In peace or war thy banner hath been spread,
All forms of human woe have follow’d there:
The Living and the Dead
Cry out alike against thee! They who bear,
Crouching beneath its weight, thine iron yoke,
Join in the bitterness of secret prayer
The voice of that innumerable throng
Whose slaughtered spirits day and night invoke
The everlasting Judge of right and wrong,
How long, O Lord! Holy and Just, how long!
Thyself remorselessly oppress’d meantime;
Greedy of war, when all that thou couldst gain
Was but to dye thy soul with deeper crime,
And rivet faster round thyself the chain.
O blind to honour, and to interest blind,
When thus in abject servitude resign’d
To this barbarian upstart, thou couldst brave
God’s justice, and the heart of humankind!
Madly thou thoughtest to enslave the world,
Thyself the while a miserable slave;
Behold the flag of vengeance is unfurl’d!
The dreadful armies of the North advance;
While England, Portugal, and Spain combined
Give their triumphant banners to the wind,
And stand victorious in the fields of France.
The cause of all this blood and all these tears;
One man in this most aweful point of time
Draws on thy danger, as he caused thy crime.
Wait not too long the event,
For now whole Europe comes against thee bent;
His wiles and their own strength the nations know;
Wise from past wrongs, on future peace intent,
The People and the Princes, with one mind,
From all parts move against the general foe:
One act of justice, one atoning blow,
One execrable head laid low,
Even yet, O France! averts thy punishment:
Open thine eyes! too long hast thou been blind;
Take vengeance for thyself, and for mankind!
Revenge thy sufferings and thy shame!
By the bones that bleach on Jaffa’s beach;
By the blood which on Domingo’s shore
Hath clogg’d the carrion-birds with gore;
By the flesh that gorged the wolves of Spain,
Or stiffen’d on the snowy plain
Of frozen Muscovy;
By the bodies that lie all open to the sky,
Tracking from Elbe to Rhine the Tyrant’s flight;
By the widow’s and the orphan’s cry,
By the childless parent’s misery,
By the lives which he hath shed,
By the ruin he hath spread,
By the prayers that rise for curses on his head,
Redeem, O France! thine ancient fame,
Revenge thy sufferings and thy shame;
Open thine eyes!.. too long hast thou been blind;
Take vengeance for thyself, and for mankind!
Witness’d, when the torches’ light
To the assembled murderers show’d
Where the blood of Condé flow’d;
By thy murder’d Pichegru’s fame;
By murder’d Wright,.. an English name;
By murder’d Palm’s atrocious doom;
By murder’d Hofer’s martyrdom;
Oh! by the virtuous blood thus vilely spilt,
The Villain’s own peculiar private guilt,
Open thine eyes! too long hast thou been blind!
Take vengeance for thyself and for mankind!