by Pa Rock
Poetry Appreciator
A year ago yesterday our own Donald John Trump was in France where he enjoyed that nation's Bastille Day military parade, an event devoted to honoring the revolutionaries who freed the French from the bejeweled and uncalloused hands of the monarchy. Trump got so carried away with the military grandeur of the parade that he'd rushed home and tried to set up his own parade for Veteran's Day. That publicity stunt fell through, but then he settled on a Plan B and co-opted this year's Fourth of July celebration in Washington, DC, and turned that into his military pep rally and photo op for his re-election.
But there are other symbols noted with the French Revolution, and one of those is the famous guillotine, the head-chopping device that ended the French monarchy (and much of French high society) once and for all. A good portion of the blood that ran in the streets and sewers of Paris during the Revolution spurted from severed arteries which had connected the bodies to the heads of French nobles and their enablers.
Here, in honor of Bastille Day (July 14th), the day the French stormed the dreaded Bastille (national prison), is a piece by British satirist, John Wolcot, who was writing at the time of the French Revolution. In this poem Wolcot lightheartedly suggested that it might not be a bad idea to import the guillotine to Britain.
And he even included a shout-out to American patriot and revolutionary, Thomas Paine.
I guess the guillotine could be imported anywhere.
Hymn to the Guillotine
by John Wolcot
Daughter of Liberty! whose knife
So busy chops the threads of life,
And frees the cumbrous clay the spirit;
Ah! why alone shall Gallia feel
The beauties of thy pond'rous steel?
Why must not Britain mark thy merit?
Hark! 'tis the dangerous groan I hear;
And lo, a squalid band appear,
With sallow cheek, and hollow eye!
Unwilling, lo, the neck they bend;
Yet, through my pow'r, their terrors end,
And with their heads the sorrows fly.
O let us view thy lofty grace;
To Britons show thy blushing face,
And bless Rebellion's life - tired train!
Joy to my soul! she's on her way,
Led by her dearest friends, Dismay,
Death, and the Devil, and Tom Paine!
Poetry Appreciator
A year ago yesterday our own Donald John Trump was in France where he enjoyed that nation's Bastille Day military parade, an event devoted to honoring the revolutionaries who freed the French from the bejeweled and uncalloused hands of the monarchy. Trump got so carried away with the military grandeur of the parade that he'd rushed home and tried to set up his own parade for Veteran's Day. That publicity stunt fell through, but then he settled on a Plan B and co-opted this year's Fourth of July celebration in Washington, DC, and turned that into his military pep rally and photo op for his re-election.
But there are other symbols noted with the French Revolution, and one of those is the famous guillotine, the head-chopping device that ended the French monarchy (and much of French high society) once and for all. A good portion of the blood that ran in the streets and sewers of Paris during the Revolution spurted from severed arteries which had connected the bodies to the heads of French nobles and their enablers.
Here, in honor of Bastille Day (July 14th), the day the French stormed the dreaded Bastille (national prison), is a piece by British satirist, John Wolcot, who was writing at the time of the French Revolution. In this poem Wolcot lightheartedly suggested that it might not be a bad idea to import the guillotine to Britain.
And he even included a shout-out to American patriot and revolutionary, Thomas Paine.
I guess the guillotine could be imported anywhere.
Hymn to the Guillotine
by John Wolcot
Daughter of Liberty! whose knife
So busy chops the threads of life,
And frees the cumbrous clay the spirit;
Ah! why alone shall Gallia feel
The beauties of thy pond'rous steel?
Why must not Britain mark thy merit?
Hark! 'tis the dangerous groan I hear;
And lo, a squalid band appear,
With sallow cheek, and hollow eye!
Unwilling, lo, the neck they bend;
Yet, through my pow'r, their terrors end,
And with their heads the sorrows fly.
O let us view thy lofty grace;
To Britons show thy blushing face,
And bless Rebellion's life - tired train!
Joy to my soul! she's on her way,
Led by her dearest friends, Dismay,
Death, and the Devil, and Tom Paine!
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