But Freron enters not the Club again
’Till it be purged of guilt:—’till, purified
Of tyrants and of traitors, honest men
May breathe the air in safety. Shouts from without.
What means this uproar! if the tyrant band
Should gain the people once again to rise—
We are as dead!
And wherefore fear we death?
Did Brutus fear it? or the Grecian friends
Who buried in Hipparchus’ breast the sword,
And died triumphant? Caesar should fear death,
Brutus must scorn the bugbear. Shouts from without—Live the Convention!—Down with the Tyrants!
Hark! again
The sounds of honest Freedom!
Citizens! representatives of France!
Hold on your steady course. The men of Paris
Espouse your cause. The men of Paris swear
They will defend the delegates of Freedom.
Hear ye this, Colleagues? hear ye this, my brethren?
And does no thrill of joy pervade your breasts?
My bosom bounds to rapture. I have seen
The sons of France shake off the tyrant yoke;
I have, as much as lies in mine own arm,
Hurl’d down the usurper.—Come death when it will,
I have lived long enough. Shouts without.
Hark! how the noise increases! through the gloom
Of the still evening—harbinger of death,
Rings the tocsin! the dreadful generale
Thunders through Paris—Cry without—Down with the Tyrant!
So may eternal justice blast the foes
Of France! so perish all the tyrant brood,
As Robespierre has perish’d! Citizens,
Caesar is taken. Loud and repeated applauses.
I marvel not that with such fearless front
He braved our vengeance, and with angry eye
Scowled round the hall defiance. He relied
On Henriot’s aid—the Commune’s villain friendship,
And Henriot’s boughten succours. Ye have heard
How Henriot rescued him—how with open arms
The Commune welcom’d in the rebel tyrant—
How Fleuriot aided, and seditious Vivier
Stirr’d up the Jacobins. All had been lost—
The representatives of France had perish’d—
Freedom had sunk beneath the tyrant arm
Of this foul parricide, but that her spirit
Inspir’d the men of Paris. Henriot call’d
“To arms” in vain, whilst Bourdon’s patriot voice
Breathed eloquence, and o’er the Jacobins
Legendre frown’d dismay. The tyrants fled—
They reach’d the Hôtel. We gather’d round—we call’d
For vengeance! Long time, obstinate in despair,
With knives they hack’d around them. ’Till foreboding
The sentence of the law, the clamorous cry
Of joyful thousands hailing their destruction,
Each sought by suicide to escape the dread
Of death. Lebas succeeded. From the window
Leapt the younger Robespierre, but his fractur’d limb
Forbade to escape. The self-will’d dictator
Plunged often the keen knife in his dark breast,
Yet impotent to die. He lives all mangled
By his own tremulous hand! All gash’d and gored
He lives to taste the bitterness of death.
Even now they meet their doom. The bloody Couthon,
The fierce St. Just, even now attend their tyrant
To fall beneath the axe. I saw the torches
Flash on their visages a dreadful light—
I saw them whilst the black blood roll’d adown
Each stern face, even then with dauntless eye
Scowl round contemptuous, dying as they lived,
Fearless of fate! Loud and repeated applauses.
Forever hallowed be this glorious day,
When Freedom, bursting her oppressive chain,
Tramples on the oppressor. When the tyrant
Hurl’d from his blood-cemented throne, by the arm
Of the almighty people, meets the death
He plann’d for thousands. Oh! my sickening heart
Has sunk within me, when the various woes
Of my brave country crowded o’er my brain
In ghastly numbers—when assembled hordes,
Dragg’d from their hovels by despotic power,
Rush’d o’er her frontiers, plunder’d her fair hamlets,
And sack’d her populous towns, and drench’d with blood
The reeking fields of Flanders.—When within,
Upon her vitals prey’d the rankling tooth
Of treason; and oppression, giant form,
Trampling on freedom, left the alternative
Of slavery, or of death. Even from that day,
When, on the guilty Capet, I pronounced
The doom of injured France, has faction reared
Her hated head amongst us. Roland preach’d
Of mercy—the uxorious dotard Roland,
The woman-govern’d Roland durst aspire
To govern France; and Petion talk’d of virtue,
And Vergniaud’s eloquence, like the honeyed tongue
Of some soft Syren wooed us to destruction.
We triumphed over these. On the same scaffold
Where the last Louis pour’d his guilty blood,
Fell Brissot’s head, the womb of darksome treasons,
And Orleans, villain kinsman of the Capet,
And Hébert’s atheist crew, whose maddening hand
Hurl’d down the altars of the living God,
With all the infidel’s intolerance.
The last worst traitor triumphed—triumph’d long,
Secur’d by matchless villainy—by turns
Defending and deserting each accomplice
As interest prompted. In the goodly soil
Of Freedom, the foul tree of treason struck
Its deep-fix’d roots, and dropt the dews of death
On all who slumber’d in its specious shade.
He wove the web of treachery. He caught
The listening crowd by his wild eloquence,
His cool ferocity that persuaded murder,
Even whilst it spake of mercy!—never, never
Shall this regenerated country wear
The despot yoke. Though myriads round assail,
And with worse fury urge this new crusade
Than savages have known; though the leagued despots
Depopulate all Europe, so to pour
The accumulated mass upon our coasts,
Sublime amid the storm shall France arise,
And like the rock amid surrounding waves
Repel the rushing ocean.—She shall wield
The thunderbolt of vengeance—she shall blast
The despot’s pride, and liberate the world!
Endnotes
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First Act by Coleridge: Second and Third by Southey—. ↩
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First published (as an octavo pamphlet) at Cambridge by Benjamin Flower in : included in Literary Remains, , I. (1)-32. First collected in Poetical and Dramatic Works, –80, in. (1)-39. “It will be remarked,” writes J. D. Campbell (Poetical Works, , p. 646), “that neither title-page nor dedication contains any hint of the joint authorship.” On this point Coleridge writes to Southey, :—“The tragedy will be printed in less than a week. I shall put my name because it will sell at least a hundred copies in Cambridge. It would appear ridiculous to print two names to such a work. But if you choose it, mention it and it shall be done. To every man who praises it, of course I give the true biography of it.” Letters of S. T. C., , I. 85. ↩
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This Song was reprinted in Coleridge’s Poems of , and later under the title of “To Domestic Peace,” vide ante, pp. 71, 72.
