Mary Hannay Foott: Verses about Fear

The coup d'etat is blotted out
With fresher blood, with blacker crime,
As midnight horrors put to rout
The vaguer ghosts of twilight-time.

“Greeting from those who are to die!
Hail Caesar!” Draw the curtains round.
In vain! That mournful mocking cry
Pierces the purple with its sound.

And they who raise it enter too,
With spectral looks and noiseless tread,
Unbidden, hold their dread review,
Beside the Emperor's very bed.

They sought in his deserted tent;
They found him in the German camp.
They tarry till the oil be spent
That feeds his life's poor flickering lamp.

The hope of France, the “gilded youth,”
So answering the trumpet's peal
As if revealing how, in sooth,
The gilding oft o'erlies the steel.

Soldiers Algeria's sun has spared;
Heroes from Russia's fire and frost;
Grey veterans, scarred and scanty-haired,
Who wept at word of eagles lost.

Workmen, who leave the rattling looms
To ply, perforce, a deadlier trade;
Students, who quit their cloudy rooms
To step within a heavier shade.

Slow-breaking hearts that suffer long,
Blinded and chilled 'neath love's eclipse;
Singing no more the happy song
By horror frozen on their lips.

From castled cities battle-proof,
They press to the accusing ranks,
From cottage walls, from canvas roof,
Ere passing to the Stygian banks.

The thousands famine yet shall waste,
The holocaust disease will claim,
As to God's Judgment-Bar they haste,
They gaze on him who is to blame.

“Hail Caesar!” While Napoleon's star
From yon horizon beams “Farewell!”
Setting in exile, where, afar,
The children of St. Louis dwell.

Come from the past, once-dreaded ghosts,
Whose number and whose names he knew!
The future plants, at countless posts,
Sentries more terrible than you!

A blue line to the westward that surely is not cloud;
A green tinge in the waters; a clamorous bird-crowd;
Then far-off foamy edges, and hill-tops timber fringed;
And, perched aloft, a light-house, o'er grey cliffs golden-tinged.

O watchers leaning landward, know ye of nothing more?
And hear ye but the sea-birds? and see ye but the shore?
Nay, look awhile, and listen who bids you welcome there;
The great seas kiss her sandals, the high stars gem her hair!
Behold her in the gateway! high-held in either hand
A blazing beacon, lighted to lead you to the land.

“Now welcome, kindly welcome, who come to me for cheer!
My forts may frown on others, but ye have nought to fear.
The cannon's flash and thunder are all for joy to-day,
No murmurs meet your coming, none wish to bar your way.”

O, later called to labour, shall we who toiled at morn
Remember, as against you, the heat and burthen borne?
No, verily, we shall not! We pray the labourer's Lord
May give you after-comers a full day's full reward.

Now fear not, fair-haired maiden, for gladness waits thee here,
As by thy father's fireside in bygone days and dear.

Thy troubled brow, O matron, beneath its silvering hair,
Shall gain no fresher furrows, shall lose its look of care;
No longer for thy household the winter need'st thou dread,
Nor, fearing for to-morrow, shalt stint the children's bread.

And thou, a “mother's darling,” on those young locks of thine
What midnight rains shall batter, what tropic suns shall shine!
Thy tender hands, toil-hardened, unwonted tools shall wield,
Shall fell the columned forest, shall till the furrowed field.
Yet, when at England's fireside her olden tales are told,
Perchance, 'mid tearful silence, one from the land of gold.
Shall tell a brave new story, of want, and work, and care,
Of trial and of triumph, to touch the coldest there!

Now enter ye a haven your fathers have not known;
Now dwell ye in a country that once was not your own.
Part of the New World's army, the pioneers, are ye;
For whom there waits, ungathered, the wealth of earth and sea!
No need of “fiery baptism,” no blood, no tears to flow,
Ah, legions of the Caesars, had you but conquered so!
Ah, Vikings in Valhalla our fathers dead and gone
Could you have made such landing such golden shores upon!