Hungary, 1848
We, too, have seen our bravest and our best
To prisons go, and mossy ruin rest
Where homes once whitened vale and mountain crest;
Therefore, O nation of the bleeding breast,
Libations, from the Hungary of the West.
Before his tent the General sips his wine,
Waves off the flies, and warms him in the shine.
The Austrian Haynau he, in many lands
Famous, a man of rules, a victor. Stands
Before him one well guarded, with bound hands;
Schoolmaster he, a dreamer, fiddler, first
In every dance, by children sought. “Accurst,
Thy name is?”
“Renyi.”
“Of?”
“This village.”
“Good!
Hiding the rebels worm in yonder wood
Or yonder mountains. Where? Thou shalt be free—
Silence! Thou shalt be dead!”
Now suddenly
The spirit of young Renyi has grown old.
He turns where, hung like drops of dripping gold,
Flashing and flickering with ever-undulant wing
About a sun-flushed dove-cot, cooing, cling
The doves whose growing forms he’d watched. Not these
He numbers. He a brown farm-house sees,
Where shadow of cherry, and shadow of apple trees,
Enclose a quiet place of beds box-bordered, bees,
Hives, currant bushes. There his kin are. High
Above, the woods where with the soft mild eye
Of her he loved fixed on him full of light,
Often he had bent down some bough all bright
With berries. Placid as a homeward bee,
Glad, simple—nay, he sought not mystery,
Nor, gazing forth where life’s sad sickles reap,
Searched the unsearchable—why good men weep;
Why those who do good often be not good,
Why they who will the highest sometimes brood,
Clogged in a marsh where the slow marsh clay clings,
Abolished by a mire of little things,
Untuned by their own striving. If one such
Were here, he would turn death into a crutch;
But this one—this one. Now his head drops low,
Drops on his bosom, sombre, moist and slow.
“Choose!” Restless Haynau’s fingers tapping go.
This sullen peasant spoils the good sunshine,
This sullen peasant spoils the good red wine.
He whispers to a soldier, who goes out—
A neighbouring cricket lifts his shrilly shout
Reiterant. A bird goes by the tent,
A lizard crawls—the two men gaze intent,
As though they’d vowed to measure all its ways.
Returns that soldier in the evening rays
Half hid. He brings the peasant’s only kin,
Two women, withered one and small and thin,
Bent low with toil and hoariest years. The other
Of middle age. “His sister here and mother.”
The soldier thus, and Haynau—“Peasant, speak
If these be precious.”
“I am old and weak,”
That ancient mother cries, “speak not, my son.
I’m weak, and by the hands shall hold each one
Of my dead children soon, whate’er betide,
For I am old and weak.”
And at her side
The sister: “Sell thy country, and the shame
Of traitor evermore is on our name.”
Haynau, the man of system, lifts his hand
Serene. They’re led away, and where a band
Of soldiers ranked is on a grassy spot,
A score of yards off ’neath a willow, shot.
“Now hath he kith or kin, or any friend?”
A soldier answers: “By the camp’s far end
I saw a girl afraid to be too near,
Afraid to be too far.” “Ay, bring her here!”
Time goes. The flakèd fire of evening crawls
Along the tents, the fields, the village walls.
The hare hath laid asleep her frolic wits,
And every flower above its shadow sits.
“On this embroidered cloud,” the sun hath said,
“A little will I lay my weary head,
Among the gold, the amber, and the red.”
A careful field-mouse finds a fallen crumb;
Now steps draw close, he hides beneath a drum.
That maiden bring they. When the tall red deer
In trouble is, the doe will linger near.
A peasant pale and pretty, her eyes for fear,
Like small brown moths, a-tremble.
“Renyi say
Where worm the rebels, or my bullets lay
The young one with the others.” Renyi’s pale
But speechless, and the maiden with long wail
Flings her before him. “Save thyself and me.
Speak, Ferencz, speak. We love each other. See,
I am so young. Dost thou no longer know,
Beloved, how two little years ago
I came the first time to thy village school?
Thou hast forgotten. On the oaken stool
I sat me down beside thee, and I knew
So little. As the months passed by we grew
To love each other. In my prayer-book still
The violets are that on the wooded hill
We gathered. Ferencz, nay, I must not die:
I am to be your wife. A village high
And lost and far in yonder hills I know;
There far away from all we two will go,
And be so happy.”
To his hands she clings,
With cries and murmurs. Suddenly he flings
Away her clinging hands, and turns. She throws
Her arms around his feet. The signal goes
From Haynau’s lifted fingers—two draw nigh
And seize her, and thus floats her quivering cry:
“Assassin, my assassin! thou who let’st me die,
I curse thee—curse thee!”
Renyi silent stands,
And she is dragged to where the willow bands
With quiet shade its ever dewy-plot.
Noise! and a flash, a momentary blot.
So ends a brain—a world!
The smoke goes up,
Creeping along the heavens’ purple cup,
Higher and higher gold with evening light;
It seems to fondle, with a finger bright
And soft, one glimmering star.
Renyi has cast
His bonds away, sore struggling.
Now at last
Haynau, thine hour has come, thy followers far
Beside the willow.
Nay, to yonder star,
Yon bauble of the heavens, he lifts his hands,
And over tillage fields and pasture lands
Where lies the cow at peace beside her calf,
He rushes, rolling from his lips a madman’s laugh.