Sedan

The looms are broken, the looms are hushed.
And a broken, weary man
Sits near a child, with fever flushed.
In a cottage of Sedan.

The mother starved with him, the weaver.
To feed their little child.
Who lies now low with famine fever,
That slew the mother mild.

The room is desolate ; the store
Has dwindled very low ;
All a poor housewife's pride of yore
Was plundered of the foe.

And a father cowers over grey
Wood-ashes barely warm ;
He feels the child is going away
In the pitiless, pale storm.

He knows an emperor lost a crown
Here in his own Sedan ;
And he knows an emperor gained a crown,
The solitary man.

He hears the voice of a world that sings
The spectacle sublime ;
Yet only heeds one life that clings
To his own a little time !

I wonder, if the Christ beholds
With eyes divinely deep,
Whom to his heart He nearest holds.
The kings, or these that weep ?

Who seem more royal and more tall
In calm, pure light from God,
These crowned colossal things that crawl,
Or lowly souls they trod ?

These purple, laurelled kings we hail
With banner and battle-blare,
Or him who writhes beneath their trail.
A pauper in despair ;
Conquered and conquerors of Sedan,
Or a dying child and a starving man ?