Читать книгу The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 05, March, 1858 - Various - Страница 6

  What do the people say, and what does the government do?—you

  Ask, and I know not at all. Yet fortune will favor your hopes; and

  I, who avoided it all, am fated, it seems, to describe it.

  I, who nor meddle nor make in politics,—I, who sincerely

  Put not my trust in leagues nor any suffrage by ballot,

  Never predicted Parisian millenniums, never beheld a

  New Jerusalem coming down dressed like a bride out of heaven

  Right on the Place de la Concorde,—I, ne'ertheless, let me say it,

  Could in my soul of souls, this day, with the Gaul at the gates, shed

  One true tear for thee, thou poor little Roman republic!

  France, it is foully done! and you, my stupid old England,—

  You, who a twelvemonth ago said nations must choose for themselves, you

  Could not, of course, interfere,—you, now, when a nation has chosen—

  Pardon this folly! The Times will, of course, have announced the

    occasion,

  Told you the news of to-day; and although it was slightly in error

  When it proclaimed as a fact the Apollo was sold to a Yankee,

  You may believe when it tells you the French are at Civita Vecchia.