Should shame and shatter such infernal art!
If He be lord who builds it, we will not
Worship, in how fierce fires soe'er our lot
He appoint for our rebellion! but I deem
'Tis only fever that so makes it seem!
Interminable armies ever wend
O'er maimed and martyred comrades to their end
Of blind, unused extinction, tho' the hope
Of infinite Love and Justice while they grope
Be kindled in their bosoms for a lure,
Fooling their hearts the torture to endure
Of false life longer, ere immersed in night
They feed some monstrous Blossom on the height
Of this infernal column of a world:
For it their souls one refuse-heap were hurled,
Bleeding and writhing, to annihilation,
For some sleek mortal god to inhale oblation
Of waste breaths, wrung from sentient agony,
A vampire draining life of these who die!
So that fierce carnage, cast in foemen's bronze.
Mounts serpentine to swell Napoleon's
Inhuman triumph, whose proud solitude
Stands pillared, purpled with the people's blood![1]
The hecatomb of myriadfold dumb lives
Invokes a clinging curse on Him who thrives
From their long torture; inarticulate calls
- ↑ Vendôme column at Paris.
