Leaves of Grass (1860)/France, the 18th Year T. S.

by Walt Whitman

Layout 2

FRANCE,

The 18th Year of These States.

1.A great year and place,
A harsh, discordant, natal scream rising, to touch the
mother's heart closer than any yet.

2.I walked the shores of my Eastern Sea,
Heard over the waves the little voice.
Saw the divine infant, where she woke, mournfully
wailing, amid the roar of cannon, curses, shouts,
crash of falling buildings.
Was not so sick from the blood in the gutters running
—nor from the single corpses, nor those in heaps,
nor those borne away in the tumbrils,
Was not so desperate at the battues of death—was
not so shocked at the repeated fusillades of the
guns.

3.Pale, silent, stern, what could I say ,to that long-
accrued retribution?
Could I wish humanity different?
Could I wish the people made of wood and stone?
Or that there be no justice in destiny or time?

4.Liberty! O mate for me!
Here too keeps the blaze, the bullet and the axe, in
reserve, to fetch them out in case of need,
Here too, though long deprest, still is not destroyed,
Here too could rise at last, murdering and extatic,
Here too would demand full arrears of vengeance.

5.Hence I sign this salute over the sea.
And I do not deny that terrible red birth and baptism,
But remember the little voice that I heard wailing—
and wait with perfect trust, no matter how long.
And from to-day, sad and cogent, I maintain the
bequeath'd cause, as for all lands.
And I send these words to Paris, with my love.
And I guess some chansonniers there will understand
them,
For I guess there is latent music yet in France—
floods of it,
O I hear already the bustle of instruments—they
will soon be drowning all that would interrupt
them,
O I think the east wind brings a triumphal and free
march,
It reaches hither—it swells me to joyful madness,
I will run transpose it in words, to justify it,
I will yet sing a song for you, ma femme.