Eva sits on the ottoman there,
Sits by a Psyche carved in stone,
With just such a face, and just such an air,
As Esther upon her throne.
She’s sifting lint for the brave who bleed,
And I watch her fingers float and flow
Over the linen, as, thread by thread,
It flakes to her lap like snow.
A bracelet clinks on her delicate wrist,
Wrought, as Cellini’s were at Rome,
Out of the tears of the amethyst,
And the wan Vesuvian foam.
And full on the bauble-crest alway–
A cameo image keen and fine–
Glares thy impetuous knife, Corday,
And the lava-locks are thine!
I thought of the war-wolves on our trail,
Their gaunt fangs sluiced with gouts of blood;
Till the Past, in a dead, mesmeric veil,
Drooped with a wizard flood
Till the surly blaze through the iron bars
Shot to the hearth with a pang and cry–
And a lank howl plunged from the Champ de Mars
To the Column of July–
Till Corday sprang from the gem, I swear,
And the dove-eyed damsel I knew had flown–
For Eva was not on the ottoman there,
By the Psyche carved in stone.
She grew like a Pythoness flushed with fate,
With the incantation in her gaze,
A lip of scorn–an arm of hate–
And a dirge of the “Marseillaise!”
Eva, the vision was not wild,
When wreaked on the tyrants of the land–
For you were transfigured to Nemesis, child,
With the dagger in your hand!
(James Ryder Randall)
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