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Title: Veterans Of The Old Guard
Author: Theophile Gautier [
More Titles by Gautier]
(December 15)
Driven by ennui from my room,
I walked along the Boulevard.
'Twas in December's mist and gloom.
A bitter wind was blowing hard.
And there I saw--strange thing to see!--
In drizzle and in daylight drear,
From out their dark abodes let free,
Dim, spectral shadow-shapes appear.
Yet 't is by night's uncanny hours,
By pallid German moonbeams cast
On old dilapidated towers,
That ghosts are wont to wander past.
It is by night's effulgent star
In dripping robes that elves intrigue
To bear beneath the nenuphar
Their dancer dead of his fatigue.
At night's mysterious tide hath been
The great review--of ballad writs--
Wherein the Emperor, dimly seen,
Numbered the shades of Austerlitz.
But phantoms near the Gymnase?--yea,
And wet and miry phantoms, too,
And close to the Varietes,
And not a shroud to trick the view!
With yellow teeth and stained dress,
And mossy skull and pierced shoon,
Paris--Montmartre--behold it press,--
Death in the very light of noon!
Ah, 't is a picture to be seen!
Three veteran ghosts in uniform
Of the Old Guard, and, spare and lean,
Two ghost-hussars in daylight's storm.
The lithograph, you would surmise,
Wherein one ray shines down upon
The dead, that Raffet deifies,
That pass and shout "Napoleon!"
No dead are these, whom nightly drum
May rouse to battle fires that burn,
But stragglers of the Old Guard, come
To celebrate the grand return!
Since fighting in the fight supreme,
One has grown thin, another stout;
The coats that fitted once now seem
Too small, too loose, or draggled out.
O epic rags! O tatters light,
Starred with a cross! Heroic things
Of ridicule, ye gleam more bright,
More beautiful than robes of kings!
Limp feathers fluttering adorn
The tawny colbacks worn and grim.
The bullet and the moth have torn
And riddled well the dolmans dim.
Their leathern breeches loosely hang
In furrows on their lank thigh-bones,
Their rusty sabres drag and clang,
As heavily they scrape the stones.
Or some round belly firm and fat,
Squeezed tight in tether labour-donned,
Makes mirth and jest to chuckle at--
Old hero quaint and cheveroned!
But do not mock and jeer, my lad.
Salute him, rather, and, believe,
Achilles he, of Iliad
That Homer's self could not conceive.
Respect these men with battle signs
That twenty skies have painted brown;
Their scars that lengthen out the lines
Of wrinkles age has written down;
Their skin whose colour deep and dun,
Bared to the fronts of many foes,
Tells us of Egypt's burning sun;
Their locks that tell of Russia's snows.
And if they shake, no longer strong?
Ah! Beresina's wind was cold.
And if they limp? The way was long,
From Cairo unto Vilna told.
If they be stiff? They'd but a flag
For sheet to hold their bodies warm.
And if a sleeve be loose, poor rag?
'T is that a bullet tore an arm.
Mock not these veteran shapes bizarre,
At whom the urchin laughs and gapes.
They were the day, of which we are
The evening, and the night, perhaps,--
Remembering if we forget--
Red lancer, grenadier in blue,
With faces to the Column set,
As to their only altar true.
There, proud of pain each scar denotes,
And of long miseries gone by,
They feel beneath their shabby coats
The heart of France beat mightily.
And so our smiles are steeped in tears,
Seeing this holy carnival,
This picture wan that reappears,
Like morning after midnight's ball.
And, cleaving heaven its own to claim,
Wide the Grand Army's eagle spreads
Its golden wings, like glory's flame,
Above their dear and hallowed heads.
[The end]
Theophile Gautier's poem: Veterans Of The Old Guard
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