The Field of Marengo

The moon shines on a darkling wood; the wood's a flying crowd
Of horses, men and halberdiers, that stirs and bellows loud;
'Twixt the Bormida and Tanaro upon Marengo's field,
They fly from Alessandria's walls they could not force to yield.

Fires from Alessandria down slopes of the Apennines
Light up the Caesar's headlong flight, Lord of the Ghibellines,
Watchfires of the League from Tortona make reply,
While through the Holy Night arise the songs of victory.

"Close is the Swabian lion mewed by civic Latin blades;
Tell it, O fires, proclaim it to the hills, the seas, the glades;
To-morrow Christ arises ! Thou shalt see how much new fame,
O Sun, we add to-morrow to the sons of the Roman name."

Listening as he leans his head upon his tall broadsword,
Thinks to himself in scorn the Hohenzollern's grey-haired lord,
To die by the hand of traders, who ne'er till yesterday
Had girded their vile fat paunches with steel for knightly fray."

While a hundred Rhenish valleys fill the Bishop's vats in Speier,
And a hundred brawny Canons are seated in his choir,
"Ah," groans he sadly, "Who for you, my fair Cathedral towers,
"On Christmas night will sing the Mass, or keep the holy hours!"

Thinks Ditpold, County Palatine, whose flowing flaxen hair
Waves round his neck so supple, like rose and privet fair:
The Elfin songs rise from the Rhine, borne on the stilly night,
Where Thekla wanders, dreaming dreams, beneath the wan moonlight."

Says the Bishop Prince of Mainz: "I carry here beside
My crozier with its iron top the unction sanctified.
There's plenty for us all I would, with their Italian load
Of silver, my poor mules were safe across the Alpine road."

Says the Count of Highland Tyrol: "To-morrow's sun shall greet
But thee, my son, upon the Alps, but thee my dog shall meet;
Henceforth they both are thine, while I, a hart trapped by villeins
Shall fall before their cut-throat knives, on these grey Lombard plains."

In the middle of the camp stood the Emperor alone
Near his charger, and looked upward to the sky; one by one
O'er his grey head still the stars were passing on, while behind
The black Imperial banner was disputing with the wind.

Kings of Poland and Bohemia arrayed on either hand
Bearing the sword and the sceptre of the Holy Empire stand;
Then when the stars grow weary, and the redrawn in the skies
Flushes the Alpine peaks with rose: "Forwards," the Caesar cries,

"To horse, my faithful lieges! Thou, Wittelsbach, display
Before the Leagues of Lombardy the sacred sign today.
Proclaim it, herald, thou, ' The Roman Emperor goes by,
Heir of Julius the Divine and of Trajan's Majesty.

Alas! between the rivers, the Tanaro and the Po
Spread the blasts of Teuton trumpets how joyously, how fast!
When the stubborn souls and standards of Italia laid low
At the aspect of the Eagle, and Imperial Caesar passed.