The Cameo Bracelet Poem by James Ryder Randall

Eva sits on the ottoman there,
Sits by a Psyche carved in stone,
With just such a face, and just such an air,
As Esther upon her throne.

She's sifting lint for the brave who bleed,
And I watch her fingers float and flow
Over the linen, as, thread by thread,
It flakes to her lap like snow.

A bracelet clinks on her delicate wrist,
Wrought, as Cellini's were at Rome,
Out of the tears of the amethyst,
And the wan Vesuvian foam.

And full on the bauble-crest alway--
A cameo image keen and fine--
Glares thy impetuous knife, Corday,
And the lava-locks are thine!

I thought of the war-wolves on our trail,
Their gaunt fangs sluiced with gouts of blood;
Till the Past, in a dead, mesmeric veil,
Drooped with a wizard flood

Till the surly blaze through the iron bars
Shot to the hearth with a pang and cry--
And a lank howl plunged from the Champ de Mars
To the Column of July--

Till Corday sprang from the gem, I swear,
And the dove-eyed damsel I knew had flown--
For Eva was not on the ottoman there,
By the Psyche carved in stone.

She grew like a Pythoness flushed with fate,
With the incantation in her gaze,
A lip of scorn--an arm of hate--
And a dirge of the 'Marseillaise!'

Eva, the vision was not wild,
When wreaked on the tyrants of the land--
For you were transfigured to Nemesis, child,
With the dagger in your hand!