France,

A GREAT year and place;

A harsh, discordant, natal scream out-sounding, to touch the mother's heart closer than any yet.

I walk'd the shores of my Eastern Sea,

Heard over the waves the little voice,

Saw the divine infant, where she woke, mournfully wail-ingwailing, amid the roar of cannon, curses, shouts, crash of falling buildings;

Was not so sick from the blood in the gutters running

      —nor from the single corpses, nor those in heaps, nor those borne away in the tumbrils;

Was not so desperate at the battues of death—was not so shock'd at the repeated fusillades of the guns.

Pale, silent, stern, what could I say to that long-accruedlong-accrued retribution?

Could I wish humanity different?

Could I wish the people made of wood and stone?

Or that there be no justice in destiny or time?

O Liberty! O mate for me!

Here too the blaze, the grape-shot and the axe, in re-servereserve, to fetch them out in case of need;

Here too, though long represt, can never be destroy'd;

Here too could rise at last, murdering and extatic;

Here too demanding full arrears of vengeance.

Hence I sign this salute over the sea,

And I do not deny that terrible red birth and baptism,

But remember the little voice that I heard wailing—and wait with perfect trust, no matter how long;

And from to-day, sad and cogent, I maintain the be-queath'dbequeath'd cause, as for all lands,

And I send these words to Paris with my love,

And I guess some chansonniers there will understand them,

For I guess there is latent music yet in France—floods of it;

O I hear already the bustle of instruments—they will soon be drowning all that would interrupt them;

O I think the east wind brings a triumphal and free march,

It reaches hither—it swells me to joyful madness,

I will run transpose it in words, to justify it,

I will yet sing a song for you, MA FEMME.