The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 3.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

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[318]

The peace convention at Brussels.

still in thy streets, O Paris! doth the stain
     Of blood defy the cleansing autumn rain;
Still breaks the smoke Messina's ruins through,
     And Naples mourns that new Bartholomew,
When squalid beggary, for a dole of bread,
     At a crowned murderer's beck of license, fed
The yawning trenches with her noble dead;
     Still, doomed Vienna, through thy stately halls
The shell goes crashing and the red shot falls,
     And, leagued to crush thee, on the Danube's side,
The bearded Croat and Bosniak spearman ride;
     Still in that vale where Himalaya's snow
Melts round the cornfields and the vines below,
     The Sikh's hot cannon, answering ball for ball,
Flames in the breach of Moultan's shattered wall;
     On Chenab's side the vulture seeks the slain,
And Sutlej paints with blood its banks again.

‘What folly, then,’ the faithless critic cries,
     With sneering lip, and wise world-knowing eyes,
“While fort to fort, and post to post, repeat The ceaseless challenge of the war-drum's beat,
     And round the green earth, to the church-bell's chime,
The morning drum-roll of the camp keeps time,
     To dream of peace amidst a world in arms,
Of swords to ploughshares changed by Scriptural charms,
     Of nations, drunken with the wine of blood,
Staggering to take the Pledge of Brotherhood,
”