Ave Caesar! Te Morituri Salutant!

The coup d'état 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!