Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/362

THE CARIB SEA 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.

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: 332