Classic Poem

O THOU who rulest by the might of legions,
Lord of the snow-robed plains, the ice-bound sea,
Hear thou man's word in far-off sunnier regions
Spoken, the thought of thousands who are free.

Deem'st thou thy millions trampled down for ages.
Will never rise in multitudinous scorn?
God clothes thee in darkness, but no God engages
That darkness shall not change to fiery morn.

Blood cries for blood, and slaughter shrieks for slaughter;
Man's dagger flashes back thy keen sword's light:
Son seeks for sire, and father seeks for daughter;
They win nor smile nor answer from the night.

Lo!—with an Emperor's arms to seize and pinion—
A woman dies beneath the ensanguined rod:
Her cry, though stifled, rings through thy dominion,—
Aye! past thy sky's cold starlight, up to God.

Not only up to God;—man's soul has shivered
With horror, hearing this accurséd thing:
A woman's cry, as 'neath the lash she quivered
King-smitten, becomes the death-knell of a king.

Her cry is cry of triumph for the nations,
For worn-out dynasties the trump of doom.
It shall be heard by hearts of generations;
Our women hear it from the Northland's gloom.

Here, where our swordless task is but to listen
Till Liberty speaks fully from her throne,
'Tis well to call to mind, while Spring's eyes glisten,
That still in one land Winter holds its own;

To call to mind that one, well born and cherished
By many a friend ere this grim deed was done,
At the flail's hundredth blood-stroke sank and perished
Where Russia's dim vaults still defy the sun.

And thou, whom darkness' sable wide wings sheltering
Still shield from sword-thrust of the avenging light,
Think'st thou that corpses in thy blind gaols weltering
Can stain the flags, yet sully not the night?

Construct thy walls of sound-proof stern ingredients!—
Erect thy prisons in thy deserts lone!—
Blood oozes out, for all thy royal expedients,
And trickles Westward from thine hells of stone.

The shrieks of thousands doubtless have been stifled:
Thine iron-barred dungeons drip with tongueless gore:
While gold-crowned dynasties have mocked or trifled,
Man's blood has rippled on a voiceless shore.

That strange Siberian snow-path, full of terror,
Along whose dismal track the doomed feet go—
Thousands, through royal crime or royal error,
Have crimsoned with their blood the silent snow.

Their suffering all seems wasted—wasted wholly
Their agelong fierce defiance of the Czars:
Still o'er that path the hapless troop winds slowly,
And still the snow turns red beneath the stars.

A hundred years have passed since, skyward flaming,
The black French fortress owned man's conquest wrought;
Confessed its hellish sins, its crimes past naming,—
Born of kings' fancies, perished at man's thought.

How many years will slowlier pass—not, surely,
Another century—ere, gaunt wall by wall,
Will flame to heaven the fort that holds securely
Liberty bound—the prison of Peter-Paul?

Or—better still—if thou, whose life is terror
To thine own self, wouldst ere that stormy hour
Fling wide the gates thy fathers closed in error
And mix with reason's dreams thy dreams of power!

What is thy life but anguish now?—immuring
Thyself behind Gatschina's massy gates,
'Spite of ten thousand bribeless bolts securing,
Thou shiverest if one rusty hinge but grates.

Chief of a hundred millions, king-commander
Of armies cumbering space with lance and plume,
Thou art thyself imprisoned, Alexander,—
Lord of the earth, yet penned within a room!

The humblest child within thy vast dominions,
Watching the free-winged swallow on the breeze
Or the glad butterfly's untrammelled pinions,
Is happier than the lord of lands and seas.

The serf within his cottage calmly slumbers;
He knows that, when he wakes, all will be well:
But thou, whose guards are unimagined numbers,
Art at the mercy of one fuse from hell.

Summer brings nought of change; in every season
Sedition's threats allow thee no repose;—
May's flower-sweet air is rank with deadliest treason;
Danger may lurk within the scented rose:

The morning sun may guide the assassin's dagger;
Aim may be trustier underneath the moon;
Thou, watching the clear skies, mayest backward stagger
Struck dead beneath the stars of fragrant June!

Sole despot-ruler of a mighty nation,
Yet art thou but the shadow of a king:
Thou startest at a green leaf's palpitation,
As the earth quakes at thy black eagle's wing.

Lifting the gold cup to thy lips thou tremblest:
Pause—what if subtlest poison should be there?
In face of friends and foemen thou dissemblest;
Long terror changed to white thine Empress' hair.

Within the holiest church the bomb exploding,
With splinters full of fiery tongues may cry,
“Remember prisoners in damp cells corroding;
Remember Bernstein choked to death—and die!”

The knife may flash forth from the embroidered curtain:
Thou, shuddering as thou see'st the cold steel shine,
Mayest hear a voice that thunders, “Czar, be certain
That Zotoff's bloodless veins must drink at thine!”

Within the night pale countless ghosts surround thee:
“Why tarry thus on earth?” their tongues exclaim;
“Already as lord of hell our hands have crowned thee,
Czar of the dungeons lit by ceaseless flame.

“Priest of the torments in the realms infernal,
Prince of the unmeasured leagues of sunless gloom,
Pass thou from earth—thine empire is eternal
Within the shades, thou Cæsar of the tomb!”