Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/291

BOOK X.] Assumed the body and venerable name

Of a Republic. Lamentable crimes,

'Tis true, had gone before this hour, dire work

Of massacre, in which the senseless sword

Was prayed to as a judge; but these were past,

Earth free from them for ever, as was thought,—

Ephemeral monsters, to be seen but once!

Things that could only show themselves and die.

Cheered with this hope, to Paris I returned,

And ranged, with ardour heretofore unfelt,

The spacious city, and in progress passed

The prison where the unhappy Monarch lay,

Associate with his children and his wife

In bondage; and the palace, lately stormed

With roar of cannon by a furious host.

I crossed the square (an empty area then!)

Of the Carrousel, where so late had lain

The dead, upon the dying heaped, and gazed

On this and other spots, as doth a man

Upon a volume whose contents he knows

Are memorable, but from him locked up,

Being written in a tongue he cannot read,

So that he questions the mute leaves with pain,

And half upbraids their silence. But that night