Various - Ballads of Bravery

And “What mockery or malice have we here?” cries Hervé Riel.
“Are you mad, you Malouins? Are you cowards, fools, or rogues?
Talk to me of rocks and shoals, me who took the soundings, tell
On my fingers every bank, every shallow, every swell
’Twixt the offing here and Greve, where the river disembogues?
Are you bought by English gold? Is it love the lying’s for?
Morn and eve, night and day,
Have I piloted your bay,
Entered free and anchored fast at the foot of Solidor.
Burn the fleet, and ruin France? That were worse than
fifty Hogues!
Sirs, they know I speak the truth! Sirs, believe me, there’s a way!
Only let me lead the line,
Have the biggest ship to steer,
Get this Formidable clear,
Make the others follow mine,
And I lead them most and least by a passage I know well,
Right to Solidor, past Greve,
And there lay them safe and sound;
And if one ship misbehave,
Keel so much as grate the ground, —
Why, I’ve nothing but my life; here’s my head!” cries Hervé Riel.

Not a minute more to wait.
“Steer us in, then, small and great!
Take the helm, lead the line, save the squadron!” cried its chief.
“Captains, give the sailor place!”
He is admiral, in brief.
Still the north-wind, by God’s grace.
See the noble fellow’s face
As the big ship, with a bound,
Clears the entry like a hound,
Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide seas profound!
See, safe through shoal and rock,
How they follow in a flock.
Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates the ground,
Not a spar that comes to grief!
The peril, see, is past,
All are harbored to the last;
And just as Hervé Riel halloos, “Anchor!” – sure as fate,
Up the English come, too late.

So the storm subsides to calm;
They see the green trees wave
On the heights o’erlooking Greve.
Hearts that bled are stanched with balm.
“Just our rapture to enhance,
Let the English rake the bay,
Gnash their teeth and glare askance
As they cannonade away!
’Neath rampired Solidor pleasant riding on the Rance!”
How hope succeeds despair on each captain’s countenance!
Out burst all with one accord,
“This is Paradise for Hell!
Let France, let France’s king,
Thank the man that did the thing!”
What a shout, and all one word,
“Hervé Riel!”
As he stepped in front once more,
Not a symptom of surprise
In the frank blue Breton eyes,
Just the same man as before.

Then said Damfreville, “My friend,
I must speak out at the end,
Though I find the speaking hard:
Praise is deeper than the lips.
You have saved the king his ships,
You must name your own reward.
Faith, our sun was near eclipse!
Demand whate’er you will,
France remains your debtor still.
Ask to heart’s content, and have, or my name’s not Damfreville.”
Then a beam of fun outbroke
On the bearded mouth that spoke,
As the honest heart laughed through
Those frank eyes of Breton blue:
“Since I needs must say my say,
Since on board the duty’s done,
And from Malo Roads to Croisic Point, what is it but a run?
Since ’tis ask and have I may,
Since the others go ashore, —
Come, a good whole holiday!
Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call the Belle Aurore!”
That he asked, and that he got, – nothing more.

Name and deed alike are lost;
Not a pillar nor a post
In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell;
Not a head in white and black
On a single fishing-smack
In memory of the man but for whom had gone to rack
All that France saved from the fight whence England bore the bell.
Go to Paris; rank on rank
Search the heroes flung pell-mell
On the Louvre, face and flank,
You shall look long enough ere you come to Hervé Riel.
So, for better and for worse,
Hervé Riel, accept my verse!
In my verse, Hervé Riel, do thou once more
Save the squadron, honor France, love thy wife, the Belle Aurore!

The circling century has brought
THE day on which our fathers fought
For liberty of deed and thought,
One hundred years ago!
We crown the day with radiant green,
And buds of hope to bloom between,
And stars undimmed, whose heavenly sheen
Lights all the world below.

At break of day again we hear
The ringing words of Paul Revere,
And beat of drum and bugle near,
And shots that shake the throne
Of tyranny, across the sea,
And wake the sons of Liberty
To strike for freedom and be free: —
Our king is God alone!

“Load well with powder and with ball,
Stand firmly, like a living wall;
But fire not till the foe shall call
A shot from every one,”
Said Parker to his gallant men.
Then Pitcairn dashed across the plain,
Discharged an angry threat, and then
The world heard Lexington!

Militia and brave minute-men
Stood side by side upon the plain,
Unsheltered in the storm of rain,
Of fire, and leaden sleet;
But through the gray smoke and the flame,
Star crowned, a white-winged angel came,
To bear aloft the souls of flame
From war’s red winding-sheet!

Hancock and Adams glory won
With yeomen whose best work was done
At Concord and at Lexington,
When first they struck the blow.
Long may their children’s children bear
Upon wide shoulders, fit to wear,
The mantles that fell through the air
One hundred years ago!

THE maid who binds her warrior’s sash,
With smile that well her pain dissembles,
The while beneath her drooping lash
One starry tear-drop hangs and trembles,
Though heaven alone records the tear,
And fame shall never know the story,
Her heart has shed a drop as dear
As e’er bedewed the field of glory.

The wife who girds her husband’s sword,
’Mid little ones who weep or wonder,
And bravely speaks the cheering word,
What though her heart be rent asunder,
Doomed nightly in her dreams to hear
The bolts of death around him rattle,
Hath shed as sacred blood as e’er
Was poured upon a field of battle!

The mother who conceals her grief,
While to her breast her son she presses,
Then breathes a few brave words and brief,
Kissing the patriot brow she blesses,
With no one but her secret God
To know the pain that weighs upon her,
Sheds holy blood as e’er the sod
Received on Freedom’s field of honor!

ALOFT upon an old basaltic crag,
Which, scalped by keen winds that defend the Pole,
Gazes with dead face on the seas that roll
Around the secret of the mystic zone,
A mighty nation’s star-bespangled flag
Flutters alone;
And underneath, upon the lifeless front
Of that drear cliff, a simple name is traced, —
Fit type of him who, famishing and gaunt,
But with a rocky purpose in his soul,
Breasted the gathering snows,