Analysis of Ave Caesar! Morituri te salutant
Mary Hannay Foott 1846 (Glasgow) – 1918 (Bundaberg)
The coup d'etat is blotted out
With fresher blood, with blacker crime,
As midnight horrors put to rout
The vaguer ghosts of twilight-time.
“Greeting from those who are to die!
Hail Caesar!” Draw the curtains round.
In vain! That mournful mocking cry
Pierces the purple with its sound.
And they who raise it enter too,
With spectral looks and noiseless tread,
Unbidden, hold their dread review,
Beside the Emperor's very bed.
They sought in his deserted tent;
They found him in the German camp.
They tarry till the oil be spent
That feeds his life's poor flickering lamp.
The hope of France, the “gilded youth,”
So answering the trumpet's peal
As if revealing how, in sooth,
The gilding oft o'erlies the steel.
Soldiers Algeria's sun has spared;
Heroes from Russia's fire and frost;
Grey veterans, scarred and scanty-haired,
Who wept at word of eagles lost.
Workmen, who leave the rattling looms
To ply, perforce, a deadlier trade;
Students, who quit their cloudy rooms
To step within a heavier shade.
Slow-breaking hearts that suffer long,
Blinded and chilled 'neath love's eclipse;
Singing no more the happy song
By horror frozen on their lips.
From castled cities battle-proof,
They press to the accusing ranks,
From cottage walls, from canvas roof,
Ere passing to the Stygian banks.
The thousands famine yet shall waste,
The holocaust disease will claim,
As to God's Judgment-Bar they haste,
They gaze on him who is to blame.
“Hail Caesar!” While Napoleon's star
From yon horizon beams “Farewell!”
Setting in exile, where, afar,
The children of St. Louis dwell.
Come from the past, once-dreaded ghosts,
Whose number and whose names he knew!
The future plants, at countless posts,
Sentries more terrible than you!
Scheme | ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH IJIJ KLKL MNMN OPOP QRQR STST UVUV WEWE |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain |
Metre | 0111101 11011101 1110111 0101111 10111111 11010101 01110101 1010111 01111101 111011 11111 010100101 11010101 11100101 11010111 111111001 01110101 1100011 11010101 0101101 100100111 101101001 110010101 11111101 10110101 110101001 10111101 110101001 11011101 10011101 10110101 11010111 1110101 11100101 11011101 110101001 01010111 0100111 11110111 11111111 110101001 1101011 1001101 01011101 11011101 11001111 01011101 10110011 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,692 |
Words | 290 |
Sentences | 22 |
Stanzas | 12 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 48 |
Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 113 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 24 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:30 min read
- 86 Views
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"Ave Caesar! Morituri te salutant" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/26888/ave-caesar%21-morituri-te-salutant>.
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