C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
From ‘The Chronicle of the Drum’
By William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863)
A
Whoever will choose to repair,
Midst a dozen of wooden-legged warriors
May haply fall in with old Pierre.
On the sunshiny bench of a tavern
He sits and he prates of old wars,
And moistens his pipe of tobacco
With a drink that is named after Mars.
And as long as his tap never fails,
Thus over his favorite liquor
Old Peter will tell his old tales.
Says he, “In my life’s ninety summers
Strange changes and chances I’ve seen,—
So here’s to all gentlemen drummers
That ever have thumped on a skin.
For four generations we are;
My ancestors drummed for King Harry,
The Huguenot lad of Navarre.
And as each man in life has his station
According as Fortune may fix,
While Condé was waving the baton,
My grandsire was trolling the sticks.
What glories my grandfather won,
Ere bigots and lackeys and panders
The fortunes of France had undone!
In Germany, Flanders, and Holland,—
What foeman resisted us then?
No; my grandsire was ever victorious,—
My grandsire and Monsieur Turenne….
Our countrymen’s glory and hope:
Monsieur, who was learned in Horace,
D’Artois, who could dance the tight-rope.
One night we kept guard for the Queen
At her Majesty’s opera-box,
While the King, that majestical monarch,
Sat filing at home at his locks.
And so smiling she looked and so tender,
That our officers, privates, and drummers
All vowed they would die to defend her.
But she cared not for us honest fellows,
Who fought and who bled in her wars:
She sneered at our gallant Rochambeau,
And turned Lafayette out of doors.
No more to such tyrants to kneel;
And so, just to keep up my drumming,
One day I drummed down the Bastille.
Ho, landlord! a stoup of fresh wine:
Come, comrades, a bumper we’ll try,
And drink to the year eighty-nine
And the glorious fourth of July!
As onward our patriots bore:
Our enemies were but a hundred,
And we twenty thousand or more.
They carried the news to King Louis;
He heard it as calm as you please,
And like a majestical monarch,
Kept filing his locks and his keys.
We stormed and we broke the great gate in,
And we murdered the insolent governor
For daring to keep us a-waiting.
Lambesc and his squadrons stood by;
They never stirred finger or thumb:
The saucy aristocrats trembled
As they heard the republican drum.
The day of our vengeance was come!
Through scenes of what carnage and ruin
Did I beat on the patriot drum!
Let’s drink to the famed tenth of August:
At midnight I beat the tattoo,
And woke up the pikemen of Paris
To follow the bold Barbaroux….
’Tis hard by the Tuileries wall;
Mid terraces, fountains, and statues,
There rises an obelisk tall.
There rises an obelisk tall,
All garnished and gilded the base is:
’Tis surely the gayest of all
Our beautiful city’s gay places.
And the Cities of France on their thrones,
Each crowned with his circlet of flowers,
Sits watching this biggest of stones!
I love to go sit in the sun there,
The flowers and fountains to see,
And to think of the deeds that were done there
In the glorious year ninety-three.
And though neither marble nor gilding
Was used in those days to adorn
Our simple republican building,—
Corbleu! but the
Cared little for splendor or show,
So you gave her an axe and a beam,
And a plank and a basket or so.
Here sat our republican goddess:
Each morning her table we decked
With dainty aristocrats’ bodies.
The people each day flocked around
As she sat at her meat and her wine:
’Twas always the use of our nation
To witness the sovereign dine.
Old silver-haired prelates and priests,
Dukes, marquises, barons, princesses,
Were splendidly served at her feasts.
Ventrebleu! but we pampered our ogress
With the best that our nation could bring;
And dainty she grew in her progress,
And called for the head of a King!
And straight from his prison we drew him;
And to her with shouting we led him,
And took him, and bound him, and slew him.
‘The Monarchs of Europe against me
Have plotted a godless alliance:
I’ll fling them the head of King Louis,’
She said, ‘as my gage of defiance.’
Away from his jailers he broke;
And stood at the foot of the scaffold,
And lingered, and fain would have spoke.
‘Ho, drummer! quick, silence yon Capet,’
Says Santerre, ‘with a beat of your drum’:
Lustily then did I tap it,
And the son of St. Louis was dumb.”