Classic Poem

The sun of Austerlitz had dawned and shone and set in blood,
When to Illyria Sigismund rode home by fell and flood.

‘What news, what news, Duke Sigismund?’ the Duchess Agnes cried.
‘Heavy—an avalanche of lead,’ Duke Sigismund replied.

‘Across the astonished land the sun comes conquering from the west—
Napoleon's banners, purpled in the blood of Europe's best.’

‘Heavy—an avalanche of lead!’ she echoed in dismay.
‘Take heart,’ he said. But she, ‘Ah me! this was our wedding-day

‘Five years ago!—Oh! that base churl, and unimagined thief,
That kingdom-breaker! Give me words, or I shall die of grief!

‘Our wedding-day, and Europe fallen! How comes it that earth stands!’
She paced the room across, along, and wrung her jewelled hands.

At last a new thought dyed her cheek and set her eyes on fire:
‘Husband, upon my wedding-day, grant me my heart's desire.

‘I have a thing to do. Take horse.—You're tired, my love? Drink wine—
But come—you must—and ride with me to Idria's poisonous mine.’

By circling paths adown the hill they rode, a toilsome way;
And came where in a cup-like gap the town of Idria lay.

Far in the hideous mine the haughty Duchess Agnes found
The thing she sought for buried quick a mile beneath the ground:

A ghastly shape of palsied bones across the lamp-light dim,
Scarce held together by the chains that bound him limb to limb.

While on the earthy slate quicksilver globed itself like dew,
He struck the sulphurous cinnabar with feeble blows and few.

A clammy sweat welled over him and drenched his ragged sash;
Upon his back appeared the curious branch-work of the lash.

The Duchess fed her eyes on him unconscious; then she said,
‘So, Casimir; poor Casimir!’ The prisoner raised his head,

And ceased his work, but looked not round. She whispered to her lord,
‘The breathing corpse that swelters here and lives this death abhorred,

‘Dared think of me, the noblest blood and highest heart there is!
Five years ago a youthful god he seemed; now is he—this!’

And then aloud: ‘Aha! my foster-brother, Casimir!
Know then at last that it was I who had you buried here.

‘You looked to me!—and yet you come of better-blooded curs
Than he who tramples on the necks of kings and emperors.

‘You looked to me, you peasant's son! So on my wedding-morn
You here were set, the enduring mark of my forgetful scorn.

‘From then till now your memory has been a bauble thrust
In some disused old cupboard and there left to gather dust.

‘To-day my suffering soul recalled the vengeance I had wrought
On one who hurt my pride by silent look and secret thought.

“Under the lash you toil and sweat and know nor day nor night,
Rotted with steaming mercury and blanched for lack of light.

‘In you I came to see what I would make of that false knave,
That giant-burglar, Bonaparte, the puddle-blooded slave!

‘Do you remember Bonaparte who conquered Italy?
He is now the master of the world; while you—why, you are he—

‘With fortunes cast like Bonaparte's, a match perhaps for him—
Who here lie buried quick to please an idle woman's whim.’

When she had done he raised his eyes—wide, hollow orbs. She shook
With instant dread, beholding awful meanings in his look.

As feeble as a child's his dwindled flesh and palsied frame,
But manhood lightened round him from his glance of purest flame.

‘Agnes,’ he sighed; and that was all he uttered of rebuke.
He paused, and then melodiously said, though low, ‘You took

‘God's way when here you buried me; nothing can touch my soul
To discord with the universe. I understand the whole

“Great wonder of creation: every atom in the earth
Aches to be man unconsciously, and every living birth—

‘The lowest struggling motion and the fiercest blood on fire,
The tree, the flower, are pressing towards a future ever higher,

‘To reach that mood august wherein we know we suffer pain.
Napoleon! I am greater by this woe and by this chain;

‘Because where all blaspheme and die, slaves of their agony,
I still am master of my thought, friend of my enemy.

‘I reverence the force that was before the world began,
And which in me obtained the signal grace to be a man.

‘Millions of men there are who happy live and happy die:
But what of that? I, too, am born a man, I, even I!’

He shone on her serenely like a solitary star,
Then turned and toiled in anguish at the poisonous cinnabar.

The Duchess gnawed her nether lip, but found no word to say.
‘The man is mad,’ the Duke declared, and led his wife away.

Glory to those who conquer Fate and peace to those who fail!
But who would be the Duchess, who, her victor-victim pale?