Hay wrote some poetry while at Brown University, and more during the Civil War. In 1865, early in his Paris stay, Hay penned "Sunrise in the Place de la Concorde", a poem attacking Napoleon III for his reinstitution of the monarchy, depicting the Emperor as having been entrusted with the child Democracy by Liberty, and strangling it with his own hands. In "A Triumph of Order", set in the breakup of the Paris Commune, a boy promises soldiers that he will return from an errand to be executed with his fellow rebels. Much to their surprise, he keeps his word and shouts to them to "blaze away" as "The Chassepots tore the stout young heart,/And saved Society."