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!