The Cameo Bracelet
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 bled, 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 fall on the bauble-crest alway— A cameo image keen and fine— Glares thy impetuous knife, Corday, And the Lara-locks are thine.
I thought of the wehr-wolves on our trail, Their gaunt fangs sluiced with gouts of blood; 'Til the Past, in a dead, mesmeric veil, Drooped with a wizard flood.
'Til 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.
'Til 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 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!
Matthew Page Andrews, M.A., Randall's literary executor, in his 1910 collection The Poems of James Ryder Randall gives this analysis:
This poem was written in the home of a beautiful Jewess, who, related to prominent members of her race then serving in the Confederacy in battlefield and in cabinet councils, was, like others, sacrificing everything material for the good of the cause. The poem is striking for its numerous allusions to historical figures and representations. These allusions are all the more remarkable because of the off-hand, almost immediate execution of the verses by the youthful poet to commemorate the incident of the girl's devotion to “the brave who bled.”
The Cameo Bracelet, Maryland, My Maryland and Other Poems, by James Ryder Randall, 1908, Page 70. (PDF)