Chapter 1

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POEMS

By Victor Hugo

1888

[Transcription note: One poem uses an a with a macron over it, this has been rendered as ä, which is not used in this text for any other purpose.]

CONTENTS.

Memoir of Victor Marie Hugo

EARLY POEMS.

Moses on the Nile--_Dublin University Magazine_ Envy and Avarice--_American Keepsake_

ODES.--1818-28.

King Louis XVII--_Dublin University Magazine_ The Feast of Freedom--_"Father Prout" (F.S. Mahony)_ Genius--_Mrs. Torre Hulme_ The Girl of Otaheite--_Clement Scott_ Nero's Incendiary Song--_H.J. Williams_ Regret--_Fraser's Magazine_ The Morning of Life Beloved Name--_Caroline Bowles (Mrs. Southey)_ The Portrait of a Child--_Dublin University Magazine_

BALLADES.--1823-28.

The Grandmother--_"Father Prout" (F.S. Mahony)_ The Giant in Glee--_Foreign Quart. Rev. (adapted)_ The Cymbaleer's Bride--_"Father Prout" (F.S. Mahony)_ Battle of the Norsemen and the Gaels Madelaine The Fay and the Peri--_Asiatic Journal_

LES ORIENTALES.--1829

The Scourge of Heaven--_I.N. Fazakerley_ Pirates' Song The Turkish Captive--_W.D., Tait's Edisiburgh Mag._ Moonlight on the Bosphorus--_John L. O'Sullivan_ The Veil--_"Father Prout" (F.S. Mahony)_ The Favorite Sultana The Pasha and the Dervish The Lost Battle--_W.D., Bentley's Miscel_., 1839 The Greek Boy Zara, the Bather--_John L. O'Sullivan_ Expectation--_John L. O'Sullivan _ The Lover's Wish--_V., Eton Observer_ The Sacking of the City--_John L. O'Sullivan_ Noormahal the Fair The Djinns--_John L. O'Sullivan_ The Obdurate Beauty--_John L. O'Sullivan_ Don Rodrigo Cornflowers--_H.L. Williams_ Mazeppa--_H.L. Williams_ The Danube in Wrath--_Fraser's Magazine_ Old Ocean--_R.C. Ellwood_ My Napoleon--_H.L. Williams_

LES FEUILLES D'AUTOMNE.--1831.

The Patience of the People--_G.W.M. Reynolds_ Dictated before the Rhone Glacier--_Author of "Critical Essays"_ The Poet's Love for Liveliness--_Fraser's Magazine_ Infantile Influence--_Henry Highton, M.A._ The Watching Angel--_Foreign Quarterly Review_ Sunset--_Toru Dutt_ The Universal Prayer--_Henry Highton, M.A._ The Universal Prayer--_C., Tait's Magazine_

LES CHANTS DU CRÉPUSCULE.--1849.

Prelude to "The Songs of Twilight"--_G.W.M. Reynolds_ The Land of Fable--_G.W.M. Rrynolds_ The Three Glorious Days--_Elizabeth Collins_ Tribute to the Vanquished--_Fraser's Magazine_ Angel or Demon--_Fraser's Magazine_ The Eruption of Vesuvius--_Fraser's Magazine_ Marriage and Feasts--_G.W.M. Reynolds_ The Morrow of Grandeur--_Fraser's Magazine_ The Eaglet Mourned--_Fraser's Magazine_ Invocation--_G.W.M. Reynolds_ Outside the Ball-room--_G.W.M. Reynolds_ Prayer for France--_J.S. Macrae_ To Canaris, the Greek Patriot--_G.W.M. Reynolds_ Poland--_G.W.M. Reynolds_ Insult not the Fallen--_W.C.K. Wilde_ Morning--_W.M. Hardinge_ Song of Love--_Toru Dutt_ Sweet Charmer--_H.B. Farnie_ More Strong than Time--_A. Lang_ Roses and Butterflies--_W.C. Westbrook_ A Simile--_Fanny Kemble-Butler_ The Poet to his Wife

LES VOIX INTÉRIEURES.--1840.

The Blinded Bourbons--_Fraser's Magazine_ To Albert Dürer--_Mrs. Newton Crosland_ To his Muse--_Fraser's Magazine_ The Cow--_Toru Dutt_ Mothers--_Dublin University Magazine_ To some Birds Flown away--_Mrs. Newton Crosland_ My Thoughts of Ye--_Dublin University Magazine_ The Beacon in the Storm Love's Treacherous Pool The Rose and the Grave--_A. Lang_

LES RAYONS ET LES OMBRES.--1840.

Holyrood Palace--_Fraser's Magazine_ The Humble Home--_Author of "Critical Essays"_ The Eighteenth Century--_Author of "Critical Essays"_ Still be a Child--_Dublin University Magazine_ The Pool and the Soul--_R.F. Hodgson_ Ye Mariners who Spread your Sails--_Author of "Critical Essays"_ On a Flemish Window-Pane--_Fraser's Magazine_ The Preceptor--_E.E. Frewer_ Gastibelza--_H.L. Williams_ Guitar Song--_Evelyn Jerrold_ Come when I Sleep--_Wm. W. Tomlinson_ Early Love Revisited--_Author of "Critical Essays"_ Sweet Memory of Love--_Author of "Critical Essays"_ The Marble Faun--_William Young_ A Love for Winged Things Baby's Seaside Grave

LES CHÂTIMENTS.--1853.

Indignation! Imperial Revels--_H.L.W._ Poor Little Children Apostrophe to Nature Napoleon "The Little" Fact or Fable--_H.L.W._ A Lament--_Edwin Arnold, C.S.I._ No Assassination The Despatch of the Doom The Seaman's Song The Retreat from Moscow--_Toru Dutt_ The Ocean's Song--_Toru Dutt_ The Trumpets of the Mind--_Toru Dutt_ After the Coup d'État--_Toru Dutt_ Patria The Universal Republic

LES CONTEMPLATIONS.--1830-56.

The Vale to You, to Me the Heights--_H.L.W_ Childhood--_Nelson R. Tyerman_ Satire on the Earth How Butterflies are Born--_A. Lang_ Have You Nothing to Say for Yourself?--_C.H. Kenny_ Inscription for a Crucifix Death, in Life The Dying Child to its Mother--_Bp. Alexander_ Epitaph--_Nelson R. Tyerman_ St. John--_Nelson R. Tyerman_ The Poet's Simple Faith--_Prof. E. Dowden_ I am Content

LA LÉGENDE DES SIÈCLES.

Cain--_Dublin University Magazine_ Boaz Asleep--_Bp. Alexander_ Song of the German Lanzknecht--_H.L.W._ King Canute--_R. Garnett_ King Canute--_Dublin University Magazine_ The Boy-King's Prayer--_Dublin University Magazine_ Eviradnus--_Mrs. Newton Crosland_ The Soudan, the Sphinxes, the Cup, the Lamp--_Bp. Alexander_ A Queen Five Summers Old--_Bp. Alexander_ Sea Adventurers' Song The Swiss Mercenaries--_Bp. Alexander_ The Cup on the Battle-Field--_Toru Dutt_ How Good are the Poor--_Bp. Alexander_

LA VOIX DE GUERNESEY.

Mentana--_Edwin Arnold, C.S.I._

LES CHANSONS DES RUES ET DES BOIS.

Love of the Woodland Shooting Stars

L'ANNÉE TERRIBLE.

To Little Jeanne--_Marwaod Tucker_ To a Sick Child during the Siege of Paris--_Lucy H. Hooper_ The Carrier Pigeon Toys and Tragedy Mourning--_Marwood Tucker_ The Lesson of the Patriot Dead--_H.L.W._ The Boy on the Barricade--_H.L.W._ To His Orphan Grandchildren--_Marwood Tucker_ To the Cannon "Victor Hugo"

L'ART D'ÊTRE GRANDPÈRE.

The Children of the Poor--_Dublin University Magazine_ The Epic of the Lion--_Edwin Arnold, C.S.I._

LES QUATRE VENTS DE L'ESPRIT.

On Hearing the Princess Royal Sing--_Nelson R. Tyerman_ My Happiest Dream An Old-Time Lay Jersey Then, most, I Smile The Exile's Desire The Refugee's Haven

VARIOUS PIECES.

To the Napoleon Column--_Author of "Critical Essays"_ Charity--_Dublin University Magazine_ Sweet Sister--_Mrs. B. Somers_ The Pity of the Angels The Sower--_Toru Dutt_ Oh, Why not be Happy?--_Leopold Wray_ Freedom and the World Serenade--_Henry F. Chorley_ An Autumnal Simile To Cruel Ocean Esmeralda in Prison Lover's Song--_Ernest Oswald Coe_ A Fleeting Glimpse of a Village--_Fraser's Magazine_ Lord Rochester's Song The Beggar's Quatrain--_H.L.C., London Society_ The Quiet Rural Church A Storm Simile

DRAMATIC PIECES.

The Father's Curse--_Fredk. L. Slous_ Paternal Love--_Fanny Kemble-Butler_ The Degenerate Gallants--_Lord F. Leveson Gower_ The Old and the Young Bridegroom--_Charles Sherry_ The Spanish Lady's Love--_C. Moir_ The Lover's Sacrifice--_Lord F. Leveson Gower_ The Old Man's Love--_C. Moir_ The Roll of the De Silva Race--_Lord F. Leveson Gower_ The Lover's Colloquy--_Lord F. Leveson Gower_ Cromwell and the Crown--_Leitch Ritchie_ Milton's Appeal to Cromwell First Love--_Fanny Kemble-Butler_ The First Black Flag--_Democratic Review_ The Son in Old Age--_Foreign Quarterly Review_ The Emperor's Return--_Athenaum_

Victor in Poesy, Victor in Romance, Cloud-weaver of phantasmal hopes and fears, French of the French, and Lord of human tears; Child-lover; Bard whose fame-lit laurels glance Darkening the wreaths of all that would advance, Beyond our strait, their claim to be thy peers; Weird Titan by thy winter weight of years As yet unbroken, Stormy voice of France!

TENNYSON.

MEMOIR OF VICTOR MARIE HUGO.

Towards the close of the First French Revolution, Joseph Leopold Sigisbert Hugo, son of a joiner at Nancy, and an officer risen from the ranks in the Republican army, married Sophie Trébuchet, daughter of a Nantes fitter-out of privateers, a Vendean royalist and devotee.

Victor Marie Hugo, their second son, was born on the 26th of February, 1802, at Besançon, France. Though a weakling, he was carried, with his boy-brothers, in the train of their father through the south of France, in pursuit of Fra Diavolo, the Italian brigand, and finally into Spain.

Colonel Hugo had become General, and there, besides being governor over three provinces, was Lord High Steward at King Joseph's court, where his eldest son Abel was installed as page. The other two were educated for similar posts among hostile young Spaniards under stern priestly tutors in the Nobles' College at Madrid, a palace become a monastery. Upon the English advance to free Spain of the invaders, the general and Abel remained at bay, whilst the mother and children hastened to Paris.

Again, in a house once a convent, Victor and his brother Eugène were taught by priests until, by the accident of their roof sheltering a comrade of their father's, a change of tutor was afforded them. This was General Lahorie, a man of superior education, main supporter of Malet in his daring plot to take the government into the Republicans' hands during the absence of Napoleon I. in Russia. Lahorie read old French and Latin with Victor till the police scented him out and led him to execution, October, 1812.

School claimed the young Hugos after this tragical episode, where they were oddities among the humdrum tradesmen's sons. Victor, thoughtful and taciturn, rhymed profusely in tragedies, "printing" in his books, "Châteaubriand or nothing!" and engaging his more animated brother to flourish the Cid's sword and roar the tyrant's speeches.

In 1814, both suffered a sympathetic anxiety as their father held out at Thionville against the Allies, finally repulsing them by a sortie. This was pure loyalty to the fallen Bonaparte, for Hugo had lost his all in Spain, his very savings having been sunk in real estate, through King Joseph's insistence on his adherents investing to prove they had "come to stay."

The Bourbons enthroned anew, General Hugo received, less for his neutrality than thanks to his wife's piety and loyalty, confirmation of his title and rank, and, moreover, a fieldmarshalship. Abel was accepted as a page, too, but there was no money awarded the ex-Bonapartist--money being what the Eaglet at Reichstadt most required for an attempt at his father's throne--and the poor officer was left in seclusion to write consolingly about his campaigns and "Defences of Fortified Towns."

Decidedly the pen had superseded the sword, for Victor and Eugène were scribbling away in ephemeral political sheets as apprenticeship to founding a periodical of their own.

Victor's poetry became remarkable in _La Muse Française_ and _Le Conservateur Littéraire_, the odes being permeated with Legitimist and anti-revolutionary sentiments delightful to the taste of Madam Hugo, member as she was of the courtly Order of the Royal Lily.

In 1817, the French Academy honorably mentioned Victor's "Odes on the Advantages of Study," with a misgiving that some elder hand was masked under the line ascribing "scant fifteen years" to the author. At the Toulouse Floral Games he won prizes two years successively. His critical judgment was sound as well, for he had divined the powers of Lamartine.

His "Odes," collected in a volume, gave his ever-active mother her opportunity at Court. Louis XVIII. granted the boy-poet a pension of 1,500 francs.

It was the windfall for which the youth had been waiting to enable him to gratify his first love. In his childhood, his father and one M. Foucher, head of a War Office Department, had jokingly betrothed a son of the one to a daughter of the other. Abel had loftier views than alliance with a civil servant's child; Eugène was in love elsewhere; but Victor had fallen enamored with Adèle Foucher. It is true, when poverty beclouded the Hugos, the Fouchers had shrunk into their mantle of dignity, and the girl had been strictly forbidden to correspond with her child-sweetheart.

He, finding letters barred out, wrote a love story ("Hans of Iceland") in two weeks, where were recited his hopes, fears, and constancy, and this book she could read.

It pleased the public no less, and its sale, together with that of the "Odes" and a West Indian romance, "Buck Jargal," together with a royal pension, emboldened the poet to renew his love-suit. To refuse the recipient of court funds was not possible to a public functionary. M. Foucher consented to the betrothal in the summer of 1821.

So encloistered had Mdlle. Adèle been, her reading "Hans" the exceptional intrusion, that she only learnt on meeting her affianced that he was mourning his mother. In October, 1822, they were wed, the bride nineteen, the bridegroom but one year the elder. The dinner was marred by the sinister disaster of Eugène Hugo going mad. (He died in an asylum five years later.) The author terminated his wedding year with the "Ode to Louis XVIII.," read to a society after the President of the Academy had introduced him as "the most promising of our young lyrists."

In spite of new poems revealing a Napoleonic bias, Victor was invited to see Charles X. consecrated at Rheims, 29th of May, 1825, and was entered on the roll of the Legion of Honor repaying the favors with the verses expected. But though a son was born to him he was not restored to Conservatism; with his mother's death all that had vanished. His tragedy of "Cromwell" broke lances upon Royalists and upholders of the still reigning style of tragedy. The second collection of "Odes" preluding it, showed the spirit of the son of Napoleon's general, rather than of the Bourbonist field-marshal. On the occasion, too, of the Duke of Tarento being announced at the Austrian Ambassador's ball, February, 1827, as plain "Marshal Macdonald," Victor became the mouthpiece of indignant Bonapartists in his "Ode to the Napoleon Column" in the Place Vendôme.

His "Orientales," though written in a Parisian suburb by one who had not travelled, appealed for Grecian liberty, and depicted sultans and pashas as tyrants, many a line being deemed applicable to personages nearer the Seine than Stamboul.

"Cromwell" was not actable, and "Amy Robsart," in collaboration with his brother-in-law, Foucher, miserably failed, notwithstanding a finale "superior to Scott's 'Kenilworth.'" In one twelvemonth, there was this failure to record, the death of his father from apoplexy at his eldest son's marriage, and the birth of a second son to Victor towards the close.

Still imprudent, the young father again irritated the court with satire in "Marion Delorme" and "Hernani," two plays immediately suppressed by the Censure, all the more active as the Revolution of July, 1830, was surely seething up to the edge of the crater.

(At this juncture, the poet Châteaubriand, fading star to our rising sun, yielded up to him formally "his place at the poets' table.")

In the summer of 1831, a civil ceremony was performed over the insurgents killed in the previous year, and Hugo was constituted poet-laureate of the Revolution by having his hymn sung in the Pantheon over the biers.

Under Louis Philippe, "Marion Delorme" could be played, but livelier attention was turned to "Nôtre Dame de Paris," the historical romance in which Hugo vied with Sir Walter. It was to have been followed by others, but the publisher unfortunately secured a contract to monopolize all the new novelist's prose fictions for a term of years, and the author revenged himself by publishing poems and plays alone. Hence "Nôtre Dame" long stood unique: it was translated in all languages, and plays and operas were founded on it. Heine professed to see in the prominence of the hunchback a personal appeal of the author, who was slightly deformed by one shoulder being a trifle higher than the other; this malicious suggestion reposed also on the fact that the _quasi_-hero of "Le Roi s'Amuse" (1832, a tragedy suppressed after one representation, for its reflections on royalty), was also a contorted piece of humanity. This play was followed by "Lucrezia Borgia," "Marie Tudor," and "Angelo," written in a singular poetic prose. Spite of bald translations, their action was sufficiently dramatic to make them successes, and even still enduring on our stage. They have all been arranged as operas, whilst Hugo himself, to oblige the father of Louise Bertin, a magazine publisher of note, wrote "Esmeralda" for her music in 1835.

Thus, at 1837, when he was promoted to an officership in the Legion of Honor, it was acknowledged his due as a laborious worker in all fields of literature, however contestable the merits and tendencies of his essays.

In 1839, the Academy, having rejected him several times, elected him among the Forty Immortals. In the previous year had been successfully acted "Ruy Blas," for which play he had gone to Spanish sources; with and after the then imperative Rhine tour, came an unendurable "trilogy," the "Burgraves," played one long, long night in 1843. A real tragedy was to mark that year: his daughter Léopoldine being drowned in the Seine with her husband, who would not save himself when he found that her death-grasp on the sinking boat was not to be loosed.

For distraction, Hugo plunged into politics. A peer in 1845, he sat between Marshal Soult and Pontécoulant, the regicide-judge of Louis XVI. His maiden speech bore upon artistic copyright; but he rapidly became a power in much graver matters.

As fate would have it, his speech on the Bonapartes induced King Louis Philippe to allow Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte to return, and, there being no gratitude in politics, the emancipated outlaw rose as a rival candidate for the Presidency, for which Hugo had nominated himself in his newspaper the _Evènement_. The story of the _Coup d'État_ is well known; for the Republican's side, read Hugo's own "History of a Crime." Hugo, proscribed, betook himself to Brussels, London, and the Channel Islands, waiting to "return with right when the usurper should be expelled."

Meanwhile, he satirized the Third Napoleon and his congeners with ceaseless shafts, the principal being the famous "Napoleon the Little," based on the analogical reasoning that as the earth has moons, the lion the jackal, man himself his simian double, a minor Napoleon was inevitable as a standard of estimation, the grain by which a pyramid is measured. These flings were collected in "Les Châtiments," a volume preceded by "Les Contemplations" (mostly written in the '40's), and followed by "Les Chansons des Rues et des Bois."

The baffled publisher's close-time having expired, or, at least, his heirs being satisfied, three novels appeared, long heralded: in 1862, "Les Misérables" (Ye Wretched), wherein the author figures as Marius and his father as the Bonapartist officer: in 1866, "Les Travailleurs de la Mer" (Toilers of the Sea), its scene among the Channel Islands; and, in 1868, "L'Homme Qui Rit" (The Man who Grins), unfortunately laid in a fanciful England evolved from recondite reading through foreign spectacles. Whilst writing the final chapters, Hugo's wife died; and, as he had refused the Amnesty, he could only escort her remains to the Belgian frontier, August, 1868. All this while, in his Paris daily newspaper, _Le Rappei_ (adorned with cuts of a Revolutionary drummer beating "to arms!"), he and his sons and son-in-law's family were reiterating blows at the throne. When it came down in 1870, and the Republic was proclaimed, Hugo hastened to Paris.

His poems, written during the War and Siege, collected under the title of "L'Année Terrible" (The Terrible Year, 1870-71), betray the long-tried exile, "almost alone in his gloom," after the death of his son Charles and his child. Fleeing to Brussels after the Commune, he nevertheless was so aggressive in sheltering and aiding its fugitives, that he was banished the kingdom, lest there should be a renewal of an assault on his house by the mob, supposed by his adherents to be, not "the honest Belgians," but the refugee Bonapartists and Royalists, who had not cared to fight for France in France endangered. Resting in Luxemburg, he prepared "L'Année Terrible" for the press, and thence returned to Paris, vainly to plead with President Thiers for the captured Communists' lives, and vainly, too, proposing himself for election to the new House.

In 1872, his novel of "'93" pleased the general public here, mainly by the adventures of three charming little children during the prevalence of an internecine war. These phases of a bounteously paternal mood reappeared in "L'Art d'être Grandpère," published in 1877, when he had become a life-senator.

"Hernani" was in the regular "stock" of the Théâtre Français, "Rigoletto" (Le Roi s'Amuse) always at the Italian opera-house, while the same subject, under the title of "The Fool's Revenge," held, as it still holds, a high position on the Anglo-American stage. Finally, the poetic romance of "Torquemada," for over thirty years promised, came forth in 1882, to prove that the wizard-wand had not lost its cunning.

After dolor, fêtes were come: on one birthday they crown his bust in the chief theatre; on another, all notable Paris parades under his window, where he sits with his grandchildren at his knee, in the shadow of the Triumphal Arch of Napoleon's Star. It is given to few men thus to see their own apotheosis.

Whilst he was dying, in May, 1885, Paris was but the first mourner for all France; and the magnificent funeral pageant which conducted the pauper's coffin, antithetically enshrining the remains considered worthy of the highest possible reverence and honors, from the Champs Elysées to the Pantheon, was the more memorable from all that was foremost in French art and letters having marched in the train, and laid a leaf or flower in the tomb of the protégé of Châteaubriand, the brother-in-arms of Dumas, the inspirer of Mars, Dorval, Le-maître, Rachel, and Bernhardt, and, above all, the Nemesis of the Third Empire.

EARLY POEMS.

MOSES ON THE NILE.

_("Mes soeurs, l'onde est plus fraiche.")_

[TO THE FLORAL GAMES, Toulouse, Feb. 10, 1820.]

"Sisters! the wave is freshest in the ray Of the young morning; the reapers are asleep; The river bank is lonely: come away! The early murmurs of old Memphis creep Faint on my ear; and here unseen we stray,-- Deep in the covert of the grove withdrawn, Save by the dewy eye-glance of the dawn.

"Within my father's palace, fair to see, Shine all the Arts, but oh! this river side, Pranked with gay flowers, is dearer far to me Than gold and porphyry vases bright and wide; How glad in heaven the song-bird carols free! Sweeter these zephyrs float than all the showers Of costly odors in our royal bowers.