The times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1897-1901, 1900-05-13
CURRENT VERSE.
GIorin Mundi. Paris. 1000.

! Magician hands through long, laborious nights
Have made these prineely palaces TO loom
| Winter than are the city's legion lights,
| On threads unseen stretched cut across the
gloom,
| Reared in an hour. for one brief hour to reign,
| The proud pavilions watchful hold in fee
A worlds achievements where the stately Seine
Slides slowly past her bridges to the sea.
Mute and memorial as on either bark
She sees the marvel worked before her eyes,
Bebolds as in n vision. rank on rank,
Pagoda. dome, and campanile rise,
Like to a mother scowling on a child
Sceptred and crowned to make queen of Ma,
The Seine, that sorrowed not fer France dehed,
Past France triumphant frowning goes her way.
Yet. dragged reluctant from these ransomed
Shores
Upon her tide that sullenly and slow
CTeepS channelwarG the unapparent scores
OF hstory's spectres disregarded go;
And as the Empress City gains the seat
OF that imperial throne to which at last
b devious ways she come. beneath her feet
The Seine in silence blots away the past.
Blots out the warning Of cathedral bells,
The night Of snowy scarves, Of swords, Of slaves,
The muffed bass Of tumbril wheels that tells
OF mortal that dig immortal graves;
Blots out the faces. calmly unaffraid
OF prince and peasant. courtesan and queen,
When France meant Hell and God meant Gull
lotine!
Like pilgrims whom holy city calls,
The peoples bring their miracles to her;
The world Of peace lays down within her walls
Its gifts Of gold. and frankincense. and myrrh;
The West. wide-eyed, alert. intrepid, young,
With rush of shuttles and the song of steam,
The East, that, lotUs-eating, gropes among
The half remembered fragments of her dream.
From minarets the muezzins call to prayer.
From vioiins the mad mazurkas rise,
And western rangers watch in wonder, where
The camel boy his listless lash applies:
And nations warning, that late have warred,
Their feuds forgot, their battles under ban,
Proclaim above the clamor Of the sword
The paean OF the mastery OF man.
Mani Born TO grovel in a squalild cave,
Whose hand it is that every door unbars,
Whose cables cieaves three thousand miles OF
wave.
Whose lenses tear their secrets from the stars!
Man! Naked, dull. unarmed. barbaric, dumb,
What magic path is this that he hath trod?
Through what refining furnace hath he come,
This denii brute become a demi-god2
Is some great river merges every song
Of tributary waters in its own,
- blend in turn its music in the strong
Full measure OF the oceans monotone.
so this triumphant anthem, skyward sent
Mans marvellous finale to presage!
Within its thunderous diapason blent,
The keynote lies Of each succeeding agef
For here the whip-lash sings above the slaves
Who bend despairing to the galIey's oars
The hoarse hail rings, across the sunit waves,
OF vikings bound to unimagined shores:
Here is the chant Of ransomed IsraePs Joy,
The Of Egypt stricken in her home,
The challenge Of the Grecian host to Troy,
The shout Of Huns before the gates Of Rome:
The oaths OF sailors on the galleon's decks.
The welcome OF Columbus TO the land,
The prayers upon the doomed Armadas wrecks,
The ralying cry OF Braddock's final stand;
Traialgar's cannon, and the bugles calls
Where frances armies thread the Alpine gorge,
The Campbelfs pipes heard near to Lucknow's
walls.
The patriots hymn that hallowed Valley Forge!
ALL all are here The feeble and the strong,
The spoiled beside the victors Of the spoil
OF twenty centuries swell the sacred song
OF human triumph won by human toll!
Up and yet upward to the heavens wide arch
The thunders Of the great Thanksgiving roll
To mark the way OF that majestic march
OF mortal man toward his Makers goalt
And while the echo OF her folly dies.
As in the hills the sound of village bells,
Upward from Paris to the April skies
Her hymn OF rehabilitation sweils; l
From dark to dawn, from weakness back to |
strength,
lie pendulum maiestically swings,
And Ger the ashes Of her past at length
The phoenix OF her future spreads its wings!
Guy WetmOre Carryl, in Harpers Weekly.