Amy Lowell - Two Travellers in the Place Vendome

Reign¹ of Louis Philippe

A great tall column spearing at the sky
With a little man on top.  Goodness!  Tell me
why?
He looks a silly thing enough to stand up there so high.
What a strange fellow, like a soldier in a play,
Tight-fitting coat with the tails cut away,
High-crowned hat which the brims overlay.
Two-horned hat makes an outline like a bow.
Must have a sword, I can see the light glow
Between a dark line and his leg.  Vertigo
I get gazing up at him, a pygmy flashed with sun.
A weathercock or scarecrow or both things in one?
As bright as a jewelled crown hung above a throne.
Say, what is the use of him if he doesn't turn?
Just put up to glitter there, like a torch to burn,
A sort of sacrificial show in a lofty urn²?
But why a little soldier in an obsolete³ dress?
I'd rather see a Goddess with a spear, I confess.
Something allegorical and fine.  Why, yes --
I cannot take my eyes from him.  I don't
know why at all.
I've looked so long the whole thing swims.  I feel he
ought to fall.
Foreshortened there among the clouds he's pitifully small.
What do you say?  There used to be an
Emperor standing⁴ there,
With flowing robes and laurel crown.  Really?  Yet
I declare
Those spiral battles round the shaft⁵ don't seem just his affair.
A togaed, laurelled man's I mean.  Now
this chap seems to feel
As though he owned those soldiers.  Whew!  How
he makes one reel,
Swinging round above his circling armies in a wheel.
Sweeping⁶ round the sky in an orbit like the sun's,
Flashing sparks like cannon-balls from his own long guns.
Perhaps my sight is tired, but that figure simply stuns⁷.
How low the houses seem, and all the people are
mere⁸ flies.
That fellow pokes⁹ his hat up till it scratches on the skies.
Impudent¹⁰!  Audacious!  But, by Jove, he blinds
the eyes!