Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LINES ON THE DEATH OF BISMARCK, by JOHN JAY CHAPMAN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LINES ON THE DEATH OF BISMARCK, by                 Poet Analysis    
First Line: At midnight death dismissed the chancellor
Last Line: Cover nine kingdoms as thou lie'st asleep.
Variant Title(s): Bismarck
Subject(s): Bismark, Otto Von (1815-1898); Prussia


At midnight, Death dismissed the chancellor
But left the soul of Bismarck on his face.
Titanic, in the peace and power of bronze,
With three red roses loosely in his grasp,
Lies the Constructor. His machinery
Revolving in the wheels of destiny
Rolls onward over him. Alive, inspired,
Vast, intricate, complete, unthinkable,
Nice as a watch and strong as dynamite,
An empire and a whirlwind, on it moves,
While he that set it rolling lies so still.

Unity! Out of chaos, petty courts,
Princelings and potentates -- thrift, jealousy,
Weakness, distemper, cowardice, distrust
To build a nation: the material --
The fibres to be twisted: human strands.
One race, one tongue, one instinct. Unify
By banking prejudice and, gaining power,
Attract by vanity, compel by fear.
Arm to the teeth: your friends will love you more,
And we have much to do for Germany.
Organized hatred, that is unity.

Prussia's a unit; Denmark's enmity
Is so much gain, and gives us all the North.
Next: humble Austria, a rapid stroke
That leaves us laurels and a policy.
Now for some chance, some -- any fluke or crime
By which a war with France can be brought on:
And, God be glorified, the thing is done.
Organized hatred. That foundation reaches
The very bottom rock of Germany
And out of it the structure rises up
Bristling with arms.

"But you forget the soul,
"The universal shout, the Kaiser's name,
"Fatherland, anthems, the heroic dead,
"The discipline, the courage, the control,
"The glory and the passion and the flame -- "
Are calculated by the captain's eye
Are used, subdued, like electricity
Turned on or off, are set to making roads,
Or building monuments, or writing verse,
Twitched by the inspired whim of tyranny
To make that tyranny perpetual
And kill what intellect it cannot use.

The age is just beginning, yet we see
The fruits of hatred ripen hourly
And Germany's in bondage -- muzzled press --
The private mind suppressed, while shade on shade
Is darkening o'er the intellectual sky.
And world-forgotten, outworn crimes and cries
With dungeon tongue accost the citizen
And send him trembling to his family.

Organized hatred. Educated men
Live in habitual scorn of intellect,
Hate France, hate England, hate America.
Talk corporals, talk until Napoleon
( -- Who never could subdue the mind of France)
Seems like some harmless passing episode,
Unable to reveal to modern man
What tyranny could compass. Years of this
Will leave a Germany devoid of fire,
Unlettered, unrebellious, impotent,
Nursing the name of German unity
And doing pilgrimage to Bismarck's shrine,
Bismarck the god, who having but one thought,
Wrote it out largely over Germany
But could not stay to read it. Those who can,
Who reap the crop he sowed may count the grains
And every seed a scourge. For on the heart
One or a million, each envenomed throb
Relentlessly records an injury,
While the encrusted nation loses health,

And like a chemical experiment
The crucible gives back its quantities.
The thing this man employed so cleverly
Was poison then, and poison in the end,
And Germany is writhing in its grip.
For Bismarck, Caesar's broker, bought the men.
They paid their liberties and got revenge --
The ancient bargain. But upon a scale
A scope, a consequence, a stretch of time
That made a camp of Europe, and set back
The cultured continent for centuries.
The fear of fire-arms has dwarfed the French
To gibbering lunatics; and Zola's friends
Are all that France can show for common-sense.
Italy's bankrupt, Russia barbarous
Kept so by isolation, and the force,
The only force that can improve the world,
Enlightened public thought in private men,
Is minimized in Europe, till The Powers
Stand over Crete to watch a butchery
And diplomats decide the fate of men.

Bismarck, how much of all lies in thy head
Thought cannot fathom. But, gigantic wreck,
Thou wast the Instrument. And thy huge limbs
Cover nine kingdoms as thou lie'st asleep.






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