James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902.
December 2The Last Cæsar, 1851–1870
By Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907)To play at Emperor; in the dead of night
Stole crown and sceptre, and stood forth to light
In sudden purple. The dawn’s straggling rays
Showed Paris fettered, murmuring in amaze,
With red hands at her throat—a piteous sight.
Then the new Cæsar, stricken with affright
At his own daring, shrank from public gaze.
But that around him flocked his birds of prey,
Sharp-beaked, voracious, hungry for the deed.
’Twixt hope and fear behold great Cæsar hang;
Meanwhile, methinks, a ghostly laughter rang
Through the rotunda of the Invalides.
Reddened, but not with sunset’s kindly glow?
What if from quai and square the murmured woe
Swept heavenward, pleadingly? The prize was won,
A kingling made and Liberty undone.
No Emperor, this, like him a while ago,
But his Name’s shadow; that one struck the blow
Himself, and sighted the street-sweeping gun!
Of true Napoleon pallor; round the eyes
The wrinkled care; moustache spread pinion-wise,
Pointing his smile with odd sardonic grace
As wearily he turns him in his place,
And bends before the hoarse Parisian cries—
Then vanishes, with glitter of gold-lace
And trumpets blaring to the patient skies.
Not thus he vanished later! On his path
The Furies waited for the hour and man,
Foreknowing that they waited not in vain.
Then fell the day, O day of dreadful wrath!
Bow down in shame, O crimson-girt Sedan!
Weep, fair Alsace! weep loveliest Lorraine!
In that old garden of the Tuileries,
Watching the dust of twilight sifting down
Through chestnut boughs just touched with autumn’s brown—
Not twilight yet, but that illusive bloom
Which holds before the deep-etched shadows come;
For still the garden stood in golden mist,
Still, like a river of molten amethyst,
The Seine slipped through its spans of fretted stone,
And near the grille that once fenced in a throne,
The fountains still unbraided to the day
The unsubstantial silver of their spray.
Temples and palaces, and gilded towers,
And fairy terraces!—and yet, and yet
Here in her woe came Marie Antoinette,
Came sweet Corday, Du Barry with shrill cry,
Not learning from her betters how to die!
Here, while the nations watched with bated breath,
Was held the saturnalia of Red Death!
For where that slim Egyptian shaft uplifts
Its point to catch the dawn’s and sunset’s drifts
Of various gold, the busy Headsman stood….
Place de la Concorde—no, the Place of Blood!
Imagination to accept the thing.
Lies, all of it! some dreamer’s wild romance—
High-hearted, witty, laughter-loving France!
In whose brain was it that the legend grew
Of Maenads shrieking in this avenue,
Of watch-fires burning, Famine standing guard,
Of long-speared Uhlans in that palace-yard!
What ruder sound this soft air ever smote
Than a bird’s twitter or a bugle’s note?
What darker crimson ever splashed these walks
Than that of rose-leaves dropping from the stalks?
That sculptured marble, splintered, like to fall,
Looming among the trees there?… And you say
This happened, as it were, but yesterday?
And here the Commune stretched a barricade,
And here the final desperate stand was made?
Such things have been? How all things change and fade!
How little lasts in this brave world below!
Love dies; hate cools; the Cæsars come and go;
Gaunt Hunger fattens, and the weak grow strong.
Even Republics are not here for long!
The lighted torch, the tocsin’s heavy boom!