Classic Poem

Les Bourreaux

Who were these feeders of the guillotine —
Waiting its meal grimly against the dawn?
They were men who held their trade as any trade;
They were boastful men, terrible as their brawn.

After the day's red work they jested, loved,
Or broke their bread with bloody finger-nails,
Or slept their sleep calm as the innocent,
And died in bed of ordinary ails.

Into their thoughts who bound the living hands,
Who, skilled or clumsily novitiate,
Heard the last sigh, received the last wild look,
Not even the wise Lenotre can penetrate.

For in the making of a million worlds
All history is a flash too swift to seize,
Though in a crypt a king and queen of France
Are lying with their heads between their knees.

Louis XVII

Any story of the little Dauphin
Closes dark around the wintry day
When before the iron-shuttered tower
Simon took his pack and went away:

Simon, who had bought him tricolored ribbons,
Cobbler-lout, his keeper for a time,
The man who had taught him ribald look and language,
His only friend in that gray tower of crime.

Someone heard him, sobbing, call
Through the terror of his wall:

" Take me with you, Simon, do!
I will help you make a shoe! "

And a child was locked from sight
Where the day was always night —
Padlocked in with fear and shame,
And the burden of his name.

Someone heard a small hand beating
On the door in wild entreating.

Someone heard a young voice sing,
Like a plaintive ghostly thing.

Someone dug a grave outside,
Not so very long or wide.

The persecutors of the little Dauphin
Long since have schemed away their sinister hour.
Gone is the guard, hushed is the Carmagnole,
Fallen the nightmare-stone that was the tower.

A blighted soul, a king without a subject,
Secret of centuries, a child goes down —
But in the eyes of all mankind forever
Wearing his crown.