Page:Poems, now first collected, Stedman, 1897.djvu/174

THE CARIB SEA He built far up the mountain-side

A royal keep, and walled it round

With towers the palm-tops could not hide;

The ramparts toward ocean frowned;

Beneath, within the rock-hewn hold,

He heaped a monarch's store of gold;

He made his nobles in a breath;

He held the power of life and death;

And here through torrid years he ruled

The Haitian horde, a despot king,—

Mocked Europe's pomp,—her minions schooled

In trade and war and parleying,—

Yet reared his dusky heirs in vain:

To end the drama, Fate grew fain,

Uprose a rebel tide, and flowed

Close to the threshold where he strode.

"And now the Black must exit make,

A craven at the last," they say:

Not so,—Christophe his leave will take

The long unwonted Roman way.

"Ho! Ho!" cried he, "the day is done,

And I go down with the setting sun!"

A pistol-shot,—no sign of fear,—

So died Christophe without a peer. 154