Pictures in Rhyme/On the Stair
ON THE STAIR
PARIS, 1789
In his hand a glittering rapier[1] shone,
As he stood on the stairway's topmost stone,
And quietly leaned on the balustrade,
Whilst the rabble paused, surprised, afraid
Of some treacherous ambuscade.
But there was none,
For he stood alone.
They had slain the guards, and broken in;
The corridors echoed their blasphemous din;
They had thrust their pikes through the panelled walls,
Their sabots clattered across the halls.
But under the carven balustrade
They paused, surprised, afraid.
- ↑
'Its delicate blade called colichenade
From that Swedish spark, Count Königsmarke.
"In his hand a glittering rapier shone"
A vase of bronze was held in its place,
On the stair-angle's marble face,
By its Bacchanalian handle;
And golden lilies were growing therein,
Type of the great who ne'er toil or spin;
And each lily held a candle.
Whilst the late Court painter's Nymph-ideal,
Devoid of expression or feeling,
Balanced upon an impossible heel,
Smiled vacantly down from the ceiling.
At last a murmur from low to loud,
Rustled and swelled across the crowd,
Which stood at bay
On the main stairway.
And Jean the butcher lifted his axe
To split that brow 'neath its curls of flax,
And cure its brains of their rambles;
But there was a sudden, steely flash,
And Jean the butcher fell with a crash,
Like an ox of his own in the shambles,
Then Bras-de-fer and porter Pierre,
And José, the Spanish commissionaire,
Pressed up the polished stair.
The smith went down with a ball in his brain;
And, sheathed in the swarthy son of Spain,
The rapier snapped at its silver hilt;
Whilst Pierre dropped dead without a groan,
For the vase, with its lilies candled and gilt,
Lit on and splintered his frontal bone:
And the crowd once more recoiled, dismayed,
From that marble balustrade
Where he stood unarmed, alone.
He glanced at the clock above the stair:—
He had gained her time to fly;
His lips moved once with a silent prayer,
As he stood there to die.
Three pikes pierced his 'broidered vest,
And, clashing, met in his breast.
Little she recked that his life-blood flowed—
She had saved her jewel-case from the crowd!
They tore the buckles out of his shoes,
The diamond rings from his finger,
Then trampled across him—no time to lose
Nor linger.
But a ray of sunlight stole up the stair,
And dropped an aureole over his hair.
••••••
The place where the palace stood you scan
In vain, for the palace no longer is there:
Not a stone is left of that marble stair,
And the clock is sold to a nobleman
For his chateau in Angleterre.
Whilst Boucher's Nymph, so rosy of hue,
Twirling her scarf of vaporous blue,
Still smiles—in New York's Fifth Avenue.