The Duke monologue — L'Aiglon

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 Armée_! 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.