You mustn't seek out power, mustn't grab the helm <br />Your work lies elsewhere, spirit of another realm, <br />In innocence withdraw before this moment here. <br />Lover of thought in mourning both sweet and severe-, <br />Disdained or understood by men still you must live <br />Shepherd for their tending, priest to blessings give. <br />When citizens embittered by their misery, <br />Sons of the same France and of the same Paris, <br />Slit one another's throats; when at each corner loom <br />Barricades just sprung up, sinister, wrapped in gloom <br />Rising, vomiting death at once and everywhere <br />Though unarmed and alone you must simply go there; <br />Must in this vile, awful and unholy war show <br />Your chest, your heart, you have to let your spirit flow, <br />To speak, to pray, to save both the weak and the strong, <br />To smile under fire and weep for the dead now gone; <br />Then to rise, calm, to your place in isolation <br />And to defend within the fervent collocation <br />Those that it would judge or from society eject, <br />To overturn the scaffold, to serve and to protect <br />The order and the peace that rash actors have shaken, <br />And our soldiers - by the little general taken, <br />And the man of the people sent to the asylum, <br />And the laws, and also our sad and proud freedom; <br />To offer consolation, at this fateful day, <br />To the divine art that shudders, weeps, and to stay <br />Awaiting for the rest the moment decisive. <br /> <br />Your role is to inform and to remain pensive.<br /><br />Victor Marie Hugo<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/what-the-poet-was-telling-himself-in-1848/
