France has no dungeon in her island tomb
So deep that she may hide injustice there;
The cry of innocence, despite her care,—
Despite her roll of drums, her cannon's boom,
Is heard wherever human hearts have room
For sympathy: a sob upon the air,
Echoed and re-echoed everywhere,
It swells and swells, a prophecy of doom.
Thou latest victim of an ancient hate!
In agony so awfully alone,
The world forgets thee not, nor can forget.
Such martyrdom she feels to be her own,
And sees involved in thine her larger fate;
She questions, and thy foes shall answer yet.
2. Dreyfus
If thou art living, in that Devil's Isle
Inquisitorial and darkly vile,
Where human hearts are pitilessly broken;
Where treacherous hate seems stronger
Than either right or law; where grief hath spoken
Its final word and asks but to forget:
If thou art living, wretched one! live yet
A little longer!
Outcast, forsaken, thou art not alone,
One bides with thee Who shall thy woes atone,
And France, entangled in her toils of hate,
Hearkens a voice of warning.
Martyr and hope of an imperiled State,
Live yet a little! In the East is light—
A pledge to thee that long tho seem the night,
There comes the morning!
3. Picquart
"For love of justice and for love of truth!"
Aye, 't was for these, for these, he put aside
Place and preferment, fortune and the pride
Of fair renown; the friends he prized, in sooth,
All the rewards of an illustrious youth,
And set his strength against a swollen tide,
And gave his spirit to be crucified,—
For love of justice and for love of truth!
Keeper of the abiding scroll of fame,
Lo! we intrust to thee a hero's name!
Life, like a restless river, hurrying by,
Bears us so swiftly on, we may forget
The name to which we owe so deep a debt,—
But guard it, thou! nor suffer it to die!
4. Le Grand Salut
So deep that she may hide injustice there;
The cry of innocence, despite her care,—
Despite her roll of drums, her cannon's boom,
Is heard wherever human hearts have room
For sympathy: a sob upon the air,
Echoed and re-echoed everywhere,
It swells and swells, a prophecy of doom.
Thou latest victim of an ancient hate!
In agony so awfully alone,
The world forgets thee not, nor can forget.
Such martyrdom she feels to be her own,
And sees involved in thine her larger fate;
She questions, and thy foes shall answer yet.
2. Dreyfus
If thou art living, in that Devil's Isle
Inquisitorial and darkly vile,
Where human hearts are pitilessly broken;
Where treacherous hate seems stronger
Than either right or law; where grief hath spoken
Its final word and asks but to forget:
If thou art living, wretched one! live yet
A little longer!
Outcast, forsaken, thou art not alone,
One bides with thee Who shall thy woes atone,
And France, entangled in her toils of hate,
Hearkens a voice of warning.
Martyr and hope of an imperiled State,
Live yet a little! In the East is light—
A pledge to thee that long tho seem the night,
There comes the morning!
3. Picquart
"For love of justice and for love of truth!"
Aye, 't was for these, for these, he put aside
Place and preferment, fortune and the pride
Of fair renown; the friends he prized, in sooth,
All the rewards of an illustrious youth,
And set his strength against a swollen tide,
And gave his spirit to be crucified,—
For love of justice and for love of truth!
Keeper of the abiding scroll of fame,
Lo! we intrust to thee a hero's name!
Life, like a restless river, hurrying by,
Bears us so swiftly on, we may forget
The name to which we owe so deep a debt,—
But guard it, thou! nor suffer it to die!
4. Le Grand Salut
There is a power in innocence, a might
Which, clothed in weakness, makes injustice vain:
A strength, o'ertopping reason to explain,
Which bears it—though deep-buried out of sight—
Slowly and surely upward to the light:
A conscious certainty amidst its pain
That, robbed of all things, it shall all regain,
Through that eternal law which guards the right.
O Dreyfus! Thy dear country has restored
More than thine honour in her hour supreme.
Noble, still noble, though she so could err,
God spared thee to her that she might redeem
Herself, and hand thee back thy blameless sword.
Listen! the world salutes—not only thee, but her!
---Florence Van Leer Earle Nicholson Coates
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