Classic Poem

I heard, as in a glorious dream,
A clarion thrill the startled air,
And saw an answering people stream
Through every noisy thoroughfare.
There were the old, whose hairs were few,
Or white with memory of the days
Of Egypt, Moscow, Waterloo, —
And now they sang the " Marseillaise . "

The aged scholar, pale and wan,
Was there within the marshalled line,
And, jostled by the noisy van,
The poet with his voice divine: —
No more could tomes the sage beguile;
The bard no longer wooed the praise
That dribbles from a monarch's smile,
For now they sang the " Marseillaise! "

And there were matrons, who of yore
Had wept a son or husband slain,
Or chanted for their Emperor
A long and loud triumphal strain: —
Their woe inspired the song no more,
Nor yet Napoleon's crown of bays,
Which rankly sprang from fields of gore,
For now they sang the " Marseillaise! "

The peasants, from their hills of vines,
Came streaming to the open plains;
No more they bore their tax of wines
To stagnate in a tyrant's veins;
France needed not the purple flood
To set her heart and brain ablaze, —
A wilder wine was in her blood,
For now she sang the " Marseillaise! "

The Bourbon's throne was trampled down,
And France no longer knelt; but now,
Struck with a patriot's hand the crown
From off the Orleans' dotard brow; —
Released from slavery and tears,
She rose and sang fair Freedom's praise,
Till far along the future years
I heard the swelling " Marseillaise! "