Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/289

 

To you, dotard, blinded by vainglory,
I chant the infuriate song of a barbarian, aroused by the smiting of hoofs.

With metallic buffetings
Scornfully I smite your enwrinkled visage,
O bestial fanatic of relentless Kaiserdom;
Your shrivelled temples I smite, your turgid Neronic lips I smite,
Covered with foaming of impotent fury.

Was this the "reason" you discovered amid the ruins of Rome,
Which now seeks to lay in store of flesh for the slaughter-house,
And to shatter the brains of manacled and vanquished victims?
For your unified Imperium to humiliate bondsmen in hordes,
Whom gladly you viewed trampled upon in triumphal arrays,
Humiliated by Roman Caesars, the bondsmen in hordes,
Meet to be fashioned into saleable myrmidons to enrol for the Imperium.

Arrogant spokesman of slavery!
Do you behold naught else but the blossoming peaks of your country,
And all beyond would you leeringly crunch
Beneath war-chariots of the conquerors
And their uncouth tread?