Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle

Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle Poems

Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle Biography

Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle (10 May 1760 – 26 June 1836), was a French Army officer of the Revolutionary Wars. He is known for writing the words and music of the Champs de Guerre pour l'Armée du Rhin in 1792, which would later be known as La Marseillaise and become the French national anthem. Rouget de Lisle was born in Lons-le-Saunier, Jura. He entered the army as an engineer and attained the rank of captain. The song that has immortalised him, La Marseillaise (based on Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 25), was composed at Strasbourg, where Rouget de Lisle was quartered in April 1792. He wrote the words in a fit of patriotic excitement after a public dinner. The piece was at first called Chant de guerre pour l'armée du Rhin ("War Song for the Army of the Rhine") and only received its name of Marseillaise from its adoption by the Provençal volunteers whom Barbaroux introduced into Paris and who were prominent in the storming of the Tuileries Palace on the 10 August. Rouget de Lisle was a royalist and was cashiered and thrown into prison in 1793, narrowly escaping the guillotine. He was freed during the Thermidorian Reaction. Rouget de Lisle wrote a few other songs of the same kind as the Marseillaise and in 1825 he published Chants français (French Songs) in which he set to music fifty songs by various authors. His Essais en vers et en prose (Attempts in Verse and Prose, 1797) contains the Marseillaise; a prose tale Adelaide et Monville of the sentimental kind; and some occasional poems. He died in poverty in Choisy-le-Roi, Seine-et-Oise. His ashes were transferred from Choisy-le-Roi cemetery to the Invalides on 14 July 1915, during World War I. A monument was erected to his memory in Lons-Le-Saunier.)

The Best Poem Of Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle

The Marseillaise

Ye sons of freedom, wake to glory!
Hark! Hark! what myriads bid you rise!
Your children, wives, and grandsires hoary,
Behold their tears and hear their cries!
Shall hateful tyrants, mischief breeding,
With hireling hosts, a ruffian band,
Affright and desolate the land,
Why peace and liberty lie bleeding?
To arms! to arms! ye brave!
The avenging sword unsheathe;
March on! march on! all hearts resolved
On victory or death.

Now, now the dangerous storm is rolling,
Which treacherous kings, confederate, raise;
The dogs of war, let loose, are howling,
And lo! our fields and cities blaze;
And shall we basely view the ruin,
While lawless force, with guilty stride,
Spreads desolation far and wide,
With crimes and blood his hands imbruing?

With luxury and pride surrounded,
The vile, insdatiate despots dare,
Their thirst of power and gold unbounded,
To meet and vend the light and air;
Like beasts of burden would they load us,
Like gods would bid their slaves adore:
But man is man, and who is more?
Then, shall they longer lash and goad us?

Oh Liberty! can man resign thee,
Once having felt thy generous flame?
Can dungeons, bolts, or bars confine thee?
Or whips thy noble spirit tame?
Too long the world has wept, bewailing
That falsehood's dagger tyrants wield,
But freedom is our sword and shield,
And all their arts are unavailing.
To arms! to arms! ye brave!
The avenging sword unsheathe;
March on! march on! all hearts resolved
On victory or death.

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