Classic Poem

My Rip Van Winkle twenty years asleep
I see reversed with Colonel Burr come down, —
Youth, startling these long-haired Virginians.
The Cainish outlaw of New York is here
A Jesus in the temple, routing doctors:
How masterful serene! how lustrous eyed!
Delight of women! linnet of the cage! —
Fresh are the species of America!
I threaded Europe lately with the pang,
" I must return, " but this is wonderful.
And yon Chief Justice is Praxiteles
Gazing on Phryne, the stripp'd courtesan,
Whom he means to acquit for loveliness.
I marvel not my brothers were for Burr;
I, mourning Hamilton, compassionate
This beauteous heifer which did gore his life,
Gentle but in her bovine period.
That deer-split hoof, his hand, did fire the shot
Which emptied nature of Minerva's child:
The sons of God were yet like Aaron Burr,
Daughters of men these freakish Jeffersons.
Men say he ruins women: women never
Have thrown a stone at Burr, their Antony.
His fawns were white. His sacerdotal touch,
Like Eli's sons, was holy to his dupes, —
Heir of the Eleusinian mysteries.
Treason or misdemeanor his offenses?
Ridiculous alternatives, i' faith!
Treason is levying War against Us only:
Yon Randolph, Burr's defender, breathed it so,
Gouverneur Morris phrased it thus exact:
Virginia's limitation, New York's words.
Burr is but traitor to Virginia's cockloft
And each one there than he more traitorous:
Madison wrote Secession Resolutions,
Monroe delivered our flag to France,
Randolph betrayed us from the cabinet,
This Wilkinson is in the pay of Spain,
And Jefferson plotted the Excise war.
Burr, driven away by their conspiracy,
Drew from the times the filibuster's dream, —
Miranda's, Rogers Clarke's, Eaton's and Lewis's, —
To speed our destiny before its ripeness
In the indefinite Hispanian waste,
His febrile fancy fired by Bonaparte
And the bright recollections of his youth
In martial camps these coistrils never joined.
Long will that West the hunted stag allure.
It is Imagination's substitute
For the fenced Paradise of cherubims
Whose swords on none but their fall'n equals flame:
Hark to the British cannon off Virginia! —
Our sailors' shrieks! O for one hour of Burr
And Hamilton!
Twig now yon other Randolph
Who brought in the indictment! 'Tis high treason
With him to be born anywhere but here:
He looks the snipe with railing faculties
Run lean, — a skeleton in excitation.
John Wickham of Long Island, bred to arms
At Arras, France, o'er-matches William Wirt,
Co-amateur with me in lightsome Letters,
Who has the heavy vividness of armor.
The treatment for this trial is humor:
A cat fight in one's party brought to bar.
Our Constitution makes theology.
That curser is one Jackson, Tennesseean,
Who would not vote respect to Washington
And now damns Madison, — an Almohade.
What height is in that Scott, the fledgling lawyer!
He's out of Amadis de Gaul; if years
Are sold by inches he'll outlast us all.
Virginia's genius in its women lies,
Their love of pleasure not their men's indulgence:
How lovely were those shoulders at the ball!
And every sylph for Burr but no man for him.
Two lawyers here are drunk by early morning.
There is old Callender, the libeller,
Diogenes in his newspaper tub,
Wherein he wallows, gnashes and snuffs plunder,
And yet I like him better than this Ritchie,
The vaunted genius of his occupation,
Who like Marat learned medicine to torture
And has a narrow controversial soul.
This city rules by him newspaper-mongers
And he is edited by Jefferson.
'Tis dissipation of belles lettres minds
To excel in these midnight exhalations.
The rainbow 'twixt Newspaper and Letters
Is broke in mid air; I'll find the far end;
It may be long or never, but my mind
Shall not be a slave driver's with my quill,
Nor in opinion-fact'ries pewtered out!
The prosecution is the President,
Who learned his passions in the sects of France,
Wrathful for liberty that in Robespierre,
The smug and incorrupt, destroyed his kind.
Few are not spoiled whom Europe magnifies,
Yet is our politics all European, —
Philology of accusations fetched
To plague plain stay-at-homes like Washington:
Democrat, Monarchist, Aristocrat, —
Words mighty in the foreign tourists' pride.
The name that bless'd me and the Chief whose hand
Was raised above me in my nurse's arms
Will stand with Caesar's when these tribunes fade.
He never would have scoured the coasts for Burr
And dragged him hither through so many States
To try him in the tyrant's local province,
Indicted by his cousin. Not ere long
This slayer did preside upon the trial
Of a high Justice and this grand juror
Did curse the Senate which would not convict:
Now Jeffrey's circuit moves to Richmond town,
But yon loose-jointed Judge has in his orbs
The mighty globe and Richmond is his throne.
Who knows what Revolutions may rise here?
What slavery President like Burr from jail
Be brought to crave his bail and find his Portia?
Then this Roi Petion , hunted to the caves,
Saved from the executioner by wolves,
Will be the sign of mercy shining down.

Petion's Madame Roland there I see,
Burr's matron daughter. Blennerhassett's wife
Was in Queen Theodosia's silver crown
As in her father's sword hilt. Why had fate
Mismated so? Burr married with his mother,
Theodosia, her son, and that one with
An idiot. Burr needed a fine woman
And made her of his child but on illusions
Wasted their substance. 'Tis a gypsy court!
Jefferson's comely daughter I have seen,
Who sought to be a nun in lawless Paris.
All these are finer women than in France
Around the condottieri Emperor.
Could faction run its length these ladies might
Go to a guillotine. Their stay is Burr,
Lex scripta and the plain colonial thought.

In climate Liberty refrigerates;
This summer heat made deadly by strong drink
And carnal by the Slavery around it,
Will soon relinquish to the Northern star
Direction, as the constellations do.
In some day not too far, Literature
Will sit upon the chaos of these presses
And soften partisans to courtesy.
Our area is like the field of stars:
The more they be the light is more diffused,
The wider radiance soothes mankind to peace,
And woman's softness, paramount at night,
Her prejudices drowsy in her realm,
Will draw the soul of strife to love and rest.
Yon golden West will govern in its prime,
With mildness known not to old colonies
Ripped from the civil wars and Bible-cracked.
Then Liberty's haranguers need not scream;
'Twill be the nature of the fertile sea
Of land and woodlands and the snow-warmed lakes;
Men will roam free and sociable as cattle
Which in their increase drive the bisons back.
Faint in that mellow sunset may appear
Among the bars of music one, far down,
Leaning on earth: the Crime of Aaron Burr.