Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LES CHATIMENTS: 1. TO PASSIVE OBEDIENCE, by VICTOR GUSTAVE PLARR



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LES CHATIMENTS: 1. TO PASSIVE OBEDIENCE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: O sons of the year two! Wars waking epic chords!
Last Line: With finger towards the skies.
Subject(s): France; French Revolution (1789); Patriotism; Soldiers; War


O Sons of the Year Two! Wars waking epic chords!
Against the banded kings together drawing swords,
In Europe's furthest bounds,

Against all earthly Tyres and Sodoms far and wide,
Against the northern Czar who after men doth ride,
Followed of all his hounds,

Against great Europe's self with all her lords of war,
With all her men-at-arms that throng her steps afar,
With all her knights of thews,

A crested hydra-shape that wrathfully doth rear,
Singing they marched and marched, with souls devoid of fear,
With feet devoid of shoes!

At day-dawn, and sundown, 'neath southern or arctic sky,
With their old muskets clanking rustily shoulder-high,
O'er torrent and o'er fell,

Without repose or sleep, in rags and driv'n to fast,
They marched on, proud and glad, to such a trumpet-blast
As blows the fiends of Hell!

Liberty, the sublime, was steeping each man's thought;
Navies were ta'en by storm, frontiers were made as nought,
Beneath their tread divine!

O France, 'twas every day wrought marvels past compare,—
Shocks, charges, battles fought, and on th' Adige Joubert,
And Marceau on the Rhine!

They drove the vanguard in, the centre they dispersed;
In rain, in snow, in floods, above their waists immersed,
Onward they pressed for aye!

And one besought for peace, another flung gates wide,
And thrones, like whirling leaves dead in late autumn-tide,
Scattered on winds away!

Oh, but how great you were in battles' midmost places,
Soldiers! With lightning eyes and wild disordered faces
In the fight's whirlpool blind,

They glowed and shone, erect, with lifted fronts, afire;
And even as desert lions the tempest's blast respire
When blows the great North wind,

So were they rapt away by their wild epic life!
Drunken, they still drank in sounds of heroic strife—
Steel clashed on iron bare,

The Marseillaise a-wing amid the cannon balls,
The beaten drums, the shells, the bombs, the cymbal-calls,
And thy clear laugh, Kleber!

The Revolution cried :— 'You volunteered for me!
So therefore die to set your brother peoples free!'
Gladly they did assent;—

'Go forth, my soldiers gray, my generals virgin-faced!'
And men beheld them march upon a world amazed,—
Barefoot, magnificent!

They know not sorrow's pangs nor yet the pangs of dread.
They would, I doubt it not, have stormed the clouds o'erhead,
If with reverted eyes,

'Mid their Olympian race, these scorners of their doom
To rear of them had seen the great Republic loom
With finger towards the skies.





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