Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE SIEUR DE ROCHEFONTAINE, by CLINTON SCOLLARD


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THE SIEUR DE ROCHEFONTAINE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Picardy, provence, touraine
Last Line: For the sieur de rochefontaine.
Subject(s): Bechet, Etienne Nicholas Marie (d. 1798); Death; St. Paul's Catherdral (new York City); Rochefontaine, Sieur De; Rochefontaine, Stephen; Dead, The


Picardy, Provençe, Touraine—
Never the fair home land again,
For the Sieur de Rochefontaine!

Never to lie among his own
With the soft south breezes o'er him blown
Where his stately noble name is known!

But ever and evermore to rest,
With the alien marble above his breast,
In the clime of his youthful soldier quest.

In the tyrannous time of war and woe,
The ancient foe of his folk our foe,
Hither he came with Rochambeau.

Lace and ruffle and epaulet,
Grace and a courtier bearing, yet
A soul as valiant as Lafayette.

A valiant soul that burned to be
In the fore of the fight for liberty
With the dauntless men who would fain be free.

Just another who caught the gleam
Of the sun of Freedom's rising beam,
Who saw the vision, who dreamed the dream.

Daily Broadway's clamours and calls
Sweep by the chapel of old St. Paul's,
Its levelled graves and its ivied walls.

Here he sleeps; may his slumbers be
Sweet with the great felicity
That waits, 'tis said, beyond Death's dark sea.

Never the fair home land!—and still
What matters it for a noble will
That smites for right, 'gainst a giant ill?

Ours the freedom he helped to gain;
So a plot of our free domaine
For the Sieur de Rochefontaine.





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