University of Virginia Library

CAVE CANEM.

I hear it now—
O, Cave Canem,
The Cerberus that asks for sops
Of blood and fire—in warning drops,
Ere the great heavens in thunder bow
And belch their bolts, the cry of Panem
(That sheathes old enses)
And the Circenses!
Fate's warhounds still may wear a muzzle,
And whine and whimper in their chain
Which yet is yielding to the strain,
And take the catlap
From Dives' fat lap;
But they alone can solve the puzzle,
And some day in their slavering jaws
Will mumble monarchs and their laws,
And pick the bones
Or tear the warm and quivering flesh
From bloated bodies full and fresh,
Of tumbled States and toppled Thrones.
Awake, ye peoples,
Downtrodden sore through ghastly years
Of impotence and fumbling fears,
By kings and priests and perjured statesmen,
And lay the steeples
Or hoary towers
Of ill-got powers
Flush with the kennel—ye are Fate's men!
Red revolution is about—
It's in the air, and on the threshold
And at the door and faintly knocking,
Nor will it long be kept without
By mouldy bars and musty blocking—
And Death has woven its awful mesh-hold.
It mocks at ancient bounds precarious,
And clearer looms
From cruel glooms—
God's retiarius.
I hear the dreadful white lips mutter,
Low in the caverns at their forges
And drunken orgies,
The final sentence;
And soon the trumpet blast will stutter
The message mixed
With doom and fixed,
Past praying and beyond repentance.