My poor dog! here! of yesterday's festival-cake
Eat the poor remains in sorrow;
For when next a repast you and I shall make,
It must be on brown bread, which, for charity's sake,
Your master must beg or borrow.

Of these strangers the presence and pride in France
Is to me a perfect riddle;
They have conquered, no doubt, by some fatal chance —
For they haughtily said, " You must play us a dance! "
I refused — and they broke my fiddle!

Of our village the orchestra, crushed at one stroke,
By that savage mault perished!
'Twas then that our pride felt the strangers yoke,
When the insolent hand of a foreigner broke
What our hearts so dearly cherished.

For whenever our youth heard it merrily sound,
A flood of gladness shedding,
At the dance on the green they were sure to be found;
While its music assembled the neighbours around
To the village maiden's wedding.

By the priest of the parish its note was pronounced
To be innocent " after service; "
And gaily the wooden-shoe'd peasantry bounced
On the bright Sabbath-day, as they danced undenounce
By pope, or bonze, or dervis.

How dismally slow will the Sabbath now run,
Without fiddle, or flute, or tabor —
How sad is the harvest when music there's none —
How sad is the vintage sans fiddle begun! —
Dismal and tuneless labour!

In that fiddle a solace for grief we had got;
'Twas of peace the best preceptor;
For its sound made all quarrels subside on the spot,
And its bow went much farther to soothe our hard lot
Than the crosier or the sceptre.

But a truce to my grief! — for an insult so base
A new pulse in my heart hath awoken!
That affront I'll revenge on their insolent race;
Gird a sword on my thigh — let a musket replace
The fiddle their hand has broken.

My friends, if I fall, my old corpse in the crowd
Of slaughtered martyrs viewing,
Shall say, while they wrap my cold limbs in a shroud,
'Twas not his fault if some a barbarian allowed
To dance in our country's ruin! "