l you, someone's carved and painted them!

PROKESCH.

Who?

THE DUKE.

And the artist was a soldier!

PROKESCH.

Why?

THE DUKE.

Each coat of regal blue has seven buttons,
The collars are correct, the linings faithful,
The tunics, brandenburghs, and forage-caps,
All's there! The painter never had to pause
To get the edgings and the facings right!
The lace is white, the flaps are triple-pointed!--
Oh, friend, whoe'er you are, with folded hands
I thank you, nameless soldier of my father!
I know not how you worked, nor whence you came.
How you found means, here, in our dismal gaol,
To paint these little mannikins for me.
Who is the hero, little wooden army--
Only a hero would have been so childish--
Who is the hero who equipped you thus
That now you smile at me from all your trappings?
Whose was the loving, microscopic brush
Which gave each tiny face its grim mustache,
Stamped cannon cross-wise on each pouch, and gave
Each officer his bugle or grenade?
Take them all out! The table's covered with them.
Here are the skirmishers, the fugle-men,
The Infantry with shoulder-straps of green.
Take them all out! They're little conquerors!
Oh, Prokesch, look! locked in that little box
Lay sleeping all the glorious _Grande Armee_!
Here are the Mamelukes--I recognize
The crimson breast-piece of the Polish Lancers.
Here are the Sappers with their purple breeches,
And here at last, with different colored leggings.
The Grenadiers of the line with waving plumes
Who marched into the battle with white gaiters;
The Conscripts here, with green and pear-shaped tufts.
Who marched to battle with their gaiters black.
Like a poor prisoner, who falls a-dreaming
Of vast and murmuring forests, with a tree
Fashioned of shavings, taken from a doll's house,
I build my Father's Epic with these soldiers.

[Illustration]

[_He moves away from the table._]

Why, yes, from here I cannot see at all
The little rounds of wood that keep them upright!
This army, Prokesch, when you move away
'Tis but the distance makes it look so small!

[_He comes back quickly._]

Place them in line for Wagram and for Eylau!
This naked yatagan shall be the water--

[_He takes a sword from the panoply._]

It is the Danube.

[_He arranges the soldiers._]

Essling! Yonder's Aspern.
Throw out a paper bridge across the steel.
Pass me a mounted Grenadier or two.

PROK