The coup d’etat is blotted out
With fresher blood, with blacker crime,-
As midnight horrors put to rout
The vaguer ghosts of twilight-time.
“Greeting from those who are to die!-
Hail Caesar!”-Draw the curtains round.
In vain!-That mournful mocking cry
Pierces the purple with its sound.
And they who raise it enter too,-
With spectral looks and noiseless tread,-
Unbidden, hold their dread review,
Beside the Emperor’s very bed.
They sought in his deserted tent;
They found him in the German camp.
They tarry till the oil be spent
That feeds his life’s poor flickering lamp.
The hope of France,-the “gilded youth,”-
So answering the trumpet’s peal
As if revealing how, in sooth,
The gilding oft o’erlies the steel.
Soldiers Algeria’s sun has spared;
Heroes from Russia’s fire and frost;
Grey veterans,-scarred and scanty-haired,-
Who wept at word of eagles lost.
Workmen, who leave the rattling looms
To ply, perforce, a deadlier trade;
Students, who quit their cloudy rooms
To step within a heavier shade.
Slow-breaking hearts that suffer long,-
Blinded and chilled ‘neath love’s eclipse;
Singing no more the happy song
By horror frozen on their lips.
From castled cities battle-proof,
They press to the accusing ranks,-
From cottage walls,-from canvas roof,-
Ere passing to the Stygian banks.
The thousands famine yet shall waste,-
The holocaust disease will claim,-
As to God’s Judgment-Bar they haste,
They gaze on him who is to blame.
“Hail Caesar!”-While Napoleon’s star
From yon horizon beams “Farewell!”
Setting in exile,-where, afar,
The children of St. Louis dwell.
Come from the past,-once-dreaded ghosts,
Whose number and whose names he knew!-
The future plants,-at countless posts,-
Sentries more terrible than you!
(Mary Hannay Foott)
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Based on Topics: Youth Poems, Hope Poems, Happiness Poems, Children Poems, Future Poems, Singing Poems, Heroism Poems, Business & Commerce Poems, Ghost Poems, Crime Poems, Soldiers PoemsBased on Keywords: vaguer, etat, erlies, judgment-bar, twilight-time, france-the