Article #55 - The Peace of Europe

                        Journall

    Devoted to Science Literature News &c.

            The Peace of Europe

Great Peace in Europe! order reigns

From Tiber’s hills to Danube’s plains;

So say her kings and priests; So say

The lying prophets of our day.

Go lay to earth a listening ear;

The tramp of measured marches hear,

The rolling of the cannon’s wheel,

The shotted musket’s murderous peal,

The night’s alarm, the sentry’s call,

The quick-eared spy in hut and hall,

From Polar sea to tropic fen

The dying groans of exiled men,

The bolted cell, the galley’s chains,

The scafford smoking with its stains

Order – the hush of brooding slaves

Peace – in the dungeon vaults and graves!

Oh Fisher! with thy world wide net

And snares in every water set,

Whose fabled keys of heaven and hell

Bolt hard the patriot’s prison cell,

And open wide the banquet hall

Where kings and priests hold carnival

Weak vassal tricked in royal guide,

Boy Kaiser with thy lip of lies;

Base gambler for Napoleon’s crown;

Barnacle on his dead renown;

There, Bourbon Neapolitan,

Crowned scandal, loathed of God & man,

And thou fell spider of the North,

Stretching thy giant feelers forth

Within whose web the freedom dies

Of nations, eaten up like flies;

Speak, Prince & Kaiser Priest & Czar,

If this be Peace, pray What is War?

White Angel of the Lord, unmeet

That soil accursed for thy pure feet,

Never in Slavery’s desert flows

The fountain of thy charmed pose,

No tyrant’s hand thy chaplet weaves

Of lilies and of olive leaves,

Not with the wicked shall thou dwell,

Thus saith the Eternal Oracle;

Thy home is with the pure & free,

The Baptist shade of Liberty,

Stern herald of thy better day,

Before thee to prepare thy way,

Gray, scarred, & hairy robed must press

With bleeding feet the wilderness,

Oh, that its voice might pierce the ear

Of princes, trembling while they hear

A cry as of the Hebrew seer;

Repent! God’s kingdom draweth near.

                                    P. G. W.