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Gordon, Hanford Lennox, 1836-1920

"The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems"


Tinville, relentless dog of murder-plot--
Doom-judge whose trembling victims were foredoomed;
Maillard who sucked his milk from Murder's dugs,
Twin-whelp to Theroigne, captain of the hags;
Jourdan, red-grizzled mule-son blotched with blood,
Headsman forever "famous-infamous;"
Keen, hag-whelped journalist Camille Desmoulins,
Who with a hundred other of his ilk
Hissed on the hounds and smeared his bread with blood;
Lebon, man-fiend, that vampire-ghoul who drank
Hot blood of headless victims, and compelled
Mothers to view the murder of their babes;
At whose red guillotine, in Arras raised,
The pipe and fiddle played at every fall
Of ghastly head the ribald "_Ca Ira_;"
And fiends unnamed and nameless brutes untaled.
Petticoat-patriots _sans bas_, and _Sans-culottes_,
Rampant in rags and hunger-toothed uproar
Paris the proud. With Jacobin clubs they club
The head of France till all her brains are out.
Hired murder hunts in packs. Men murder-mad
Slay for the love of murder. Gloomy night,
Hiding her stars lest they in pity fall,
Beholds a thousand guiltless, trembling souls--
Men, women, children--forth from prisons flung
In flare of torch and glare of demon eyes,
Among the howling wolves and lazar-hags,
Crying for mercy where no mercy is,
Hewed down in heaps by bloody ax and pike.


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