Select Poetry.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 31, 26 August 1871, Page 18

Select Poetry.

PARIS. Is this the end for which the arts have striven ? Is this the consummation of the hope That lured the sciences from dormant sleep Amid the busy brains of thinking men, To rear proud monuments of might and fame ? Oh, Freedom, stand erect ; nor bow thy head In dark oblivion. It cannot be That in thy cause, or for thy honored name, Was devastation such as this e’er made. Full well art thou beloved, and well we know That ’tis impossible to love too well Thy noble cause. Still slavery, with all its grim And ghastly horrors, were as yet preferred To life with thee.’mid ruin, firo, and death. Oh, Paris, see of the past — The honored of the world—thy country’s pride— That told thy city’s greatness to all men, And caused thine enemies to envy thee : Where are those gems that proudly waved their heads, And told thy tale of fame in ages past To every generation that sprang up ? They’ve crumbled into dust, and form a cloud That canopies tliy gloom —through which the rays Of God’s refulgent sun can hardly pierce. Their smoking ruins hiss their venom forth, Till they become a mass of nothingness. And, France, where are thy mighty sons, who fought Thy battles in the distant foreign climes— Who traversed half of Europe in thy cause, And conquered nations in thy country’s name ? Oh, where are they, the flower of all thy land— The boast of ages past—the hackneyed theme On which thy poets fondly loved to dwell— The glory of thy statesmen, and thy hope — The horse on which thy rulers rode to fame Through fire, and blood, and direst cruelty ? Thy weeping widows well may tell thee where ; Thy mourning orphan children, too, can tell. Nay, ask that foetid odour which ascends From heaps of slain within thy city’s gates To meet the balmy waft of heaven’s sweet breath, And, choking’t, hurls it back a poisoned mass To kill what yet remainetli. It can tell ! Thy poisoned soil, that sends no verdure forth — Thy barren vineyards, and tby sickly grain— Thy rivers, crimson-tinted with the gore Of those who sleep benea,t.h them. They can tell! Weep Paris. Thouhast sinned, but suffered sore Glasgow, June 3. J. MTNNES.