At the height of the French revolution, and the prelude to the reign of terror, Mirabeau, upon hearing of Sophie’s death, left the National Assembly and disappeared for multiple days.Of happy and unhappy love I know. O heart, sweet-heart, how much now in the midst of our unrest you seem to me indelible and pure. How often now I think to those grand days when I, a humble prisoner in rags, would beg for everything a pen could ask. Oh Sophie, dear beloved, please come back; for still alas I wake and search for you beside me in my bed as morning comes to ambush me with daggers and demands, for who could not but weep for one so young. Come see by light of freshly minted dawn our pockmarked revolution has prevailed. While your prodigious lover found his post between these men of reason and the royal. Both pay for genius though neither have the wit to understand a single word. Yet singing for my supper, as I must, I puff the scruffy plumage of each bird. Don’t judge me harshly darling, fate has cut my deck with spades and kings so now I play my weary hand for everything there is. Is it so wrong to ask for minor gain? Stability is treason now they say, staunch mummery abounds in ratskin cloaks, Ideas have spread, infecting prose and verse, the sun king has absconded with our god. My heart contracts one moment swells the next, so much is now at stake you understand; a child of two, this nation cries, it’s lost, in need of love while anger chokes it still. So there!
"light of freshly minted dawn"
Love it.