Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE MARSEILLAISE, by VICTOR GUSTAVE PLARR


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE MARSEILLAISE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: A band a-playing a few sooty rods
Last Line: Not france alone, but man!
Subject(s): Ancestry & Ancestors; France; French Revolution (1789); Hope; Justice; National Songs; Optimism; National Anthems


A band a-playing, a few sooty rods
Of London garden in a foggy cloud,
Mill's effigy and Forster's for sole gods,
Pale workmen, a tired crowd.

Ah, but the dullest scene is often rife
With gleams and visions and bewitching power
To charm the flagging fancies back to life,
So now, at this dead hour,

The drums confer, according to old use,
In low, restrained, yet strangely thrilling ways,
Then, like armed Pallas from the brain of Zeus,
Leaps forth the Marseillaise!

Song that was framed where my forefather dwelt!
As thrills the Clansman when old pibrochs shrill,
I bred in Saxon schools, I nowise Celt,
To thee again I thrill!

The dark-faced rabbles of the past arise—
Maenads and beggars in untoward rags,
Exalted faces, fierce ideal eyes,
And a Republic's flags!

O'er the huge rounded cobbles of the street,
By the gaunt beetling houses, in a throng,
They march and pass with bare but steadfast feet,
And mouths rotund in song!

The tocsin shrills: the kennel underneath
Blackens with blood: there's blood in dew and rain:
All things are sullied with the crimson death
Save that august refrain!

You cannot say of tide or fire 'they err,'
Or predicate of joy and anger shame;
Laughter and tempest are commingled here,
Billows and wrath and flame!

And if to some this song that greatly comes
Out of the past bring but a tale of wars,
Of sweating horses and of roaring drums,
Sword-strokes and heroes' scars,

To some it brings, not these, but man's old rage
For Truth, Peace, Justice, Life's auguster plan,
The poor man's hope, the meek man's heritage,
Not France alone, but Man!





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