Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE VIVANDIERE ('70), by WILLIAM ROSE BENET


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE VIVANDIERE ('70), by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: O yvonne, / how you dazzled in the dance!
Last Line: For yvonne the vivandière!
Subject(s): Dancing & Dancers; Love - Marital; Singing & Singers; Wedded Love; Marriage - Love; Songs


O Yvonne,
How you dazzled in the dance!
How you shone
With the love you bore for France!
Slow our tread.
Heads are bowed—each head is bare—
For our dead—
(Brave in life; in death how rare!)
For our dead Death has wed to our glory and despair,
For Yvonne the Vivandière!

Soft you sped
With the evening from our lines
Through the dread
Coming night, 'mid clinging vines;
And the Germans caught and bound you
As you spied,—and thronged around you
Haled with laughter through the village to their feast so like the swine's.

In the court
Of the Inn of Good Accord
You made sport
For a drunken foe abhorred,
As they rolled upon their benches
Roaring songs of wine and wenches.
And a radiance shone around you like the glory of the Lord!

Pale past tears,
Coarse and hostile jest and boast
Stunned your ears;
Yet—a gallant little ghost—
Swift, to shouts of "Dance! Some dancing!"
Flashed your bare feet, twinkling, glancing;
And your eyes flamed deep with splendor like the lifting of the Host!

Was it known
Where your comrade soldiers lay
Nigh the town,
Outposts lurking, close at bay,
Creeping nearer? Nay! These drunken
German swine knew naught! Your shrunken
Red-striped skirt was kilted round you, but your face went deeper gray.

Then it flushed,
As you glanced from man to man
And there rushed
Through your brain a mighty plan.
Swift and swifter whirled the dance
To "À moi!"—"Victoire!"—"La France!"
Murmured first—then sung—then shouted, while the Teutons clinked the
can.

Would the scorned
Skies of night not right our wrong,
As you warned—
While they thought you sang a song?
Would the winds of night not bear us
Some least echo to prepare us?
Swift you whirled. Shrill, far you shouted; till you stirred the drunken throng.

But they thought
That the drink had made you gay.
They forgot
In our ambush where we lay.
And, if Heaven had meant to save us,
What a Heaven-sent chance you gave us.
Yet we heard not and we knew not, all as dull and dense as they!

Yet till Death,
Girl, you failed not in your dance.
Your last breath
Shrieked "La France! La France! La France!"
And our Emperor's heart-beats heightened
As the far East faintly lightened.
But we slept—and had not heard you. Battle dawned—and died our chance!

Then despair
Gripped your heart in icy hold.
You fell there,
Suddenly—stiff, dumb, and cold,
Heart dead-stopped to voice and dancing;
With the battle-dawn advancing
Where the first wild clouds of sunrise o'er the kindling mountains rolled!

Through all France
In a week the rumor ran
Of your dance
In the dawn before Sedan.
And the gloom a little lightened
As your glad deed grew and brightened,
Though our Empire crashed to chaos to the Teuton's rataplan.

Valor more
Than that Captain's foully slain
At the door
Of the staircase toward the Seine
Where Eugènie fled by night
And he covered long her flight
'Gainst a cursing, raging rabble with red murder in its brain!

Not the glow
Of the Little Corporal's fame
Thrills us so,—
Not MacMahon's noble name,—
As that fearless girl swift-glancing
Into last despairing dancing
For one hope—that France might waken ere the destined burst of flame.

O Yvonne,
How you dazzled in the dance!
How you shone
With the love you bore for France!
Slow our tread.
Heads are bowed—each head is bare—
For our dead—
(Brave in life; in death how rare!)
For our dead Death has wed to our glory and despair,
For Yvonne the Vivandière!





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