Volume 2 — ODE WRITTEN DURING THE NEGOTIATIONS WITH BUONAPARTE (1814). Source.—Robert Southey: Poems.

1. Who counsels peace at this momentous hour, When God hath given deliverance to the oppress’d, And to the injured power? Who counsels peace, when Vengeance like a flood Rolls on, no longer now to be repressed; When innocent blood From the four corners of the world cries out For justice upon one accurséd head; When Freedom hath her holy banner spread Over all nations, now in one just cause United; when with one sublime accord Europe throws off the yoke abhorr’d, And Loyalty and Faith and Ancient Laws Follow the avenging sword? 2. Woe, woe to England! woe and endless shame, If this heroic land, False to her feelings and unspotted fame, Hold out the olive to the Tyrant’s hand! Woe to the world, if Buonaparte’s throne Be suffer’d still to stand! For by what names shall Right and Wrong be known? What new and courtly phrases must we feign For Falsehood, Murder, and all monstrous crimes, If that perfidious Corsican maintain Still his detested reign, And France, who yearns even now to break her chain, Beneath his iron rule be left to groan? No! by the innumerable dead Whose blood hath for his lust of power been shed, Death only can for his foul deeds atone; That peace which Death and Judgment can bestow, That peace be Buonaparte’s, and that alone! 3. For sooner shall the Ethiop change his skin, Or from the Leopard shall her spots depart, Than this man change his old flagitious heart. Have ye not seen him in the balance weighed, And there found wanting?—On the stage of blood Foremost the resolute adventurer stood; And when, by many a battle won, He placed upon his brow the crown, Curbing delirious France beneath his sway, Then, like Octavius in old time, Fair name might he have handed down, Effacing many a stain of former crime. Fool! should he cast away that bright renown! Fool! the redemption proffer’d should he lose! When Heaven such grace vouchsafed him that the way To Good and Evil lay Before him, which to choose. 4. But Evil was his Good, For all too long in blood had he been nursed, And ne’er was earth with verier tyrant cursed. Bold man and bad, Remorseless, godless, full of fraud and lies, And black with murders and with perjuries, Himself in Hell’s whole panoply he clad; No law but his own headstrong will he knew, No counsellor but his own wicked heart. From evil thus portentous strength he drew, And trampled under foot all human ties, All holy laws, all natural charities. 5. O France! beneath this fierce Barbarian’s sway Disgraced thou art to all succeeding times; Rapine, and blood, and fire have marked thy way, All loathsome, all unutterable crimes. A curse is on thee, France! From far and wide It hath gone up to Heaven; all lands have cried For vengeance upon thy detested head; All nations curse thee, France! for wheresoe’er In peace or war thy banner hath been spread, All forms of human woe have followed there: The Living and the Dead Cry out alike against thee! They who bear, Crouching beneath its weight, thine iron yoke, Join in the bitterness of secret prayer The voice of that innumerable throng Whose slaughtered spirits day and night invoke The everlasting Judge of right and wrong, How long, O Lord! Holy and Just, how long! 6. A merciless oppressor hast thou been, Thyself remorselessly oppressed meantime; Greedy of war, when all that thou couldst gain Was but to dye thy soul with deeper crime, And rivet faster round thyself the chain. O blind to honour, and to int’rest blind, When thus in abject servitude resigned To this barbarian upstart, thou couldst brave God’s justice, and the heart of humankind! Madly thou thoughtest to enslave the world, Thyself the while a miserable slave; Behold the flag of vengeance is unfurl’d! The dreadful armies of the North advance; While England, Portugal, and Spain combined Give their triumphant banners to the wind, And stand victorious in the fields of France. 7. One man hath been for ten long wretched years The cause of all this blood and all these tears; One man in this most awful point of time Draws on thy danger, as he caused thy crime. Wait not too long the event, For now whole Europe comes against thee bent; His wiles and their own strength the nations know; Wise from past wrongs, on future peace intent, The People and the Princes, with one mind, From all parts move against the general foe: One act of justice, one atoning blow, One execrable head laid low, Even yet, O France! averts thy punishment: Open thine eyes! too long hast thou been blind; Take vengeance for thyself, and for mankind! 8. France! if thou lov’st thine ancient fame, Revenge thy sufferings and thy shame! By the bones that bleach on Jaffa’s beach; By the blood which on Domingo’s shore Hath clogg’d the carrion-birds with gore; By the flesh that gorged the wolves of Spain, Or stiffened on the snowy plain Of frozen Muscovy; By the bodies that lie all open to the sky, Tracking from Elbe to Rhine the Tyrant’s flight; By the widow’s and the orphan’s cry, By the childless parent’s misery, By the lives which he hath shed, By the ruin he hath spread, By the prayers that rise for curses on his head, Redeem, O France! thine ancient fame, Revenge thy sufferings and thy shame; Open thine eyes! Too long hast thou been blind; Take vengeance for thyself, and for mankind! 9. By those horrors which the night Witnessed, when the torches’ light To the assembled murderers showed Where the blood of Condé flowed; By thy murdered Pichegru’s fame; By murdered Wright (an English name); By murdered Palm’s atrocious doom; By murdered Hofer’s martyrdom; Oh! by the virtuous blood thus vilely spilt, The Villain’s own peculiar private guilt, Open thine eyes! too long hast thou been blind! Take vengeance for thyself and for mankind!