On the green before the tavern
A crippled veteran sits,
He talks and sings of battles,
Of Marengo and Austerlitz.

The blooming youth of the village
Camp round him in the grass;
The rosy maidens are busy,
Filling his empty glass.

A child in his lap is playing
With the old man's beard and hair;
While with his cane and sabre,
Two boys stand sentries there.

The Pedagogue of the village,
Grim tyrant of that young crew,
He sits beside the old Pensioner,
They once were playmates, too.

The invalid rolls his sleeve up,
And cries aloud: " Now hear!
I'm going to tell you a story;
Now children, all give ear!"

And nearer round the greybeard
Gathers the listening swarm:
" Woe! but what ugly figures
Are branded on thy arm!"

" I'll read you the riddle, my children,
The signs are not bad to me —
They tell to him who can read them
Half the world's history!

" On the blooming banks of the Loire once
I grew a happy child,
Fair fortune, in bride-like beauty,
With sunny glances smiled.

" On the blooming banks of the Loire then
A glorious maid was mine;
And on my arm I printed
This Heart and our names, for a sign.

" Then was the king at Paris
But a poor churl in my view;
On the francs and louis d'ors only
His good, round face I knew.

" And often I asked why his head
Should stand on the coins, alone:
That I in this was a prophet,
How could I then have known?

" One day there came to our valley
The glare of war and the din,
And hordes of men in triumph,
Half-naked and wild, rushed in.

" A blood-red cap on their lances
High in the air they swung,
And they shouted: " Freedom! Freedom! "
Till all the welkin rung.

" It rang in my ear like music,
I stepped into the line,
And they branded on my arm, then,
The flaming Cap for a sign.

" One day our ranks beheld there
A pale, dark man at their head:
He asked us — we asked him — no questions;
We followed wherever he led!

" He held a flying eagle
In the grasp of his mighty hand,
And he cried with voice of thunder:
For glory and Fatherland!

" His cry was a thrilling music,
An omen of victory;
We followed — and dreamed full often,
Himself the eagle must be.

" The bird flapped well his pinions,
And fast he flew and far,
Just pausing on Africa's Pyramids,
On the palaces of the Czar;

" On St. Stephen's tower in Vienna,
On the Vatican at Rome; —
But, from Notre Dame beholding
The throngs, he was most at home.

" 'Mid the clang and the clash of battle,
And the flash and the triumph-peal,
I branded in the Eagle
On my arm with the glowing steel.

" The eagle flapped well his pinion,
But he vanished from sight one day,
And ah! he vanished forever,
We lost him forever and aye!

" Then came strange armies upon us,
Horde upon horde streamed forth,
And ah, many well known faces,
From South and East and North!

" They cried " Peace, Peace! " but no longer
As that cry had for years been known;
That cry, as now it sounded,
It rang with a new, strange tone.

" " Justice and Peace! " they shouted,
In the name of God most Just,
And burned our cities to ashes,
And stamped our crops in the dust.

" They hurled the peaceful olive
From the point of the bloody sword,
And spouting forth white lilies,
The crashing artillery roared!

" And on my arm, one day, too,
Fell one such glowing flower,
And I wear the sign of the Lily
Burned in from that very hour.

" So, you see, on my arm I carry
Half the world's history;
The heart, cap, eagle and lily,
They tell a true story to me!

" The cap was long since torn in pieces,
The eagle to glory flew,
And when this poor heart is broken,
The lilies shall wither too.

" I name my king to the heirdom
Of all my property,
This arm with the figures inbranded,
When I die, shall his heirloom be.

" He shall lay the arm in a casket,
Beneath a gilded lid,
As that world-famous monarch
With the songs of Homer did.

" Therein he read a sentence
Each day, a verse or line;
So let my king read often
This history-book of mine.

" Now, Pedagogue, what say you
To my world-history?"
He thinks: In usum Delphini
No very bad book 'twould be.