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THE EMIGRANTS (1793)
CHARLOTTE SMITH (1794–1806)
Oft have I heard the melancholy tale,
Which, all their native gaiety forgot,
These Exiles tell – How Hope impell’d them on,
Reckless of tempest, hunger, or the sword,
Till order’d to retreat, they knew not why,
From all their flattering prospects, they became
The prey of dark suspicion and regret:
Then, in despondence, sunk the unnerv’d arm
Of gallant Loyalty – At every turn
Shame and disgrace appear’d, and seem’d to mock
Their scatter’d squadrons; which the warlike youth,
Unable to endure, often implor’d,
As the last act of friendship, from the hand
Of some brave comrade, to receive the blow
That freed the indignant spirit from its pain.
To a wild mountain, whose bare summit hides
Its broken eminence in clouds; whose steeps
Are dark with woods; where the receding rocks
Are worn by torrents of dissolving snow,
A wretched Woman, pale and breathless, flies!
And, gazing round her, listens to the sound
Of hostile footsteps – No! it dies away:
No noise remains, but of the cataract,
Or surly breeze of night, that mutters low
Among the thickets, where she trembling seeks
A temporary shelter – clasping close
To her hard-heaving heart her sleeping child,
All she could rescue of the innocent groupe [sic]
That yesterday surrounded her – Escap’d
Almost by miracle! Fear, frantic Fear,
Wing’d her weak feet: yet, half repentant now
Her headlong haste, she wishes she had staid
To die with those affrighted Fancy paints
The lawless soldier’s victims – Hark! again
The driving tempest bears the cry of Death,
And, with deep sudden thunder, the dread sound
Of cannon vibrates on the tremulous earth;
While, bursting in the air, the murderous bomb
Glares o’er her mansion. Where the splinters fall,
Like scatter’d comets, its destructive path
Is mark’d by wreaths of flame! – Then, overwhelm’d
Beneath accumulated horror, sinks
The desolate mourner; yet, in Death itself,
True to maternal tenderness, she tries
To save the unconscious infant from the storm
In which she perishes; and to protect
This last dear object of her ruin’d hopes
From prowling monsters, that from other hills,
More inaccessible, and wilder wastes,
Lur’d by the scent of slaughter, follow fierce
Contending hosts, and to polluted fields
Add dire increase of horrors – But alas!
The Mother and the Infant perish both! –
The feudal Chief, whose Gothic battlements
Frown on the plain beneath, returning home
From distant lands, alone and in disguise,
Gains at the fall of night his Castle walls,
But, at the vacant gate, no Porter sits
To wait his Lord’s admittance! – In the courts
All is drear silence! – Guessing but too well
The fatal truth, he shudders as he goes
Thro’ the mute hall; where, by the blunted light
That the dim moon thro’ painted casements lends,
He sees that devastation has been there:
Then, while each hideous image to his mind
Rises terrific, o’er a bleeding corse
Stumbling he falls; another interrupts
His staggering feet – all, all who us’d to rush
With joy to meet him – all his family
Lie murder’d in his way! – And the day dawns
On a wild raving Maniac, whom a fate
So sudden and calamitous has robb’d
Of reason; and who round his vacant walls
Screams unregarded, and reproaches Heaven! –
Such are thy dreadful trophies, savage War!
And evils such as these, or yet more dire,
Which the pain’d mind recoils from, all are thine –
The purple Pestilence, that to the grave
Sends whom the sword has spar’d, is thine; and thine
The Widow’s anguish and the Orphan’s tears! –
Woes such as these does Man inflict on Man;
And by the closet murderers, whom we style
Wise Politicians, are the schemes prepar’d,
Which, to keep Europe’s wavering balance even,
Depopulate her kingdoms, and consign
To tears and anguish half a bleeding world! –
[SOURCE: Charlotte Smith, The Emigrants, a Poem (London: T. Cadell, 1793), pp. 54–9]
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