Page:Poems, now first collected, Stedman, 1897.djvu/173

 CHRISTOPHE

(CAPE HAYTIEN)

His breeches cost him but a crown!"

So from the old world came the jeer

Of them who hunted Toussaint down:

But what was this grim slave that swept

The shambles, then to greatness leapt?

Their counterfeit in bronze, a thing

To mock,—or every inch a king?

On San-Souci's defiant wall

His people saw, against the sky,

Christophe,—a shape the height of Saul,—

A chief who brooked no rivals nigh.

Right well he aped the antique state;

His birth was mean, his heart was great;

No azure filled his veins,—instead,

The Afric torrent, hot and red.

153