The royal word goes forth, and armies do <br />The work of devils. Agony and waste <br />Are on the world, and the grim legions haste <br />On the old war-roads that the Caesars knew. <br />Still gleams the dreadful stain of Waterloo, <br />On Time's accusing record unerased; <br />Gone are the ramparts that the Romans faced, <br />But these the heavens where their eagles flew. <br /> <br />Below the bleak and slowly shifting stars, <br />Man turns him in his madness, to reveal <br />His ancient folly and his ancient crime, <br />And on the tragic breast austere with scars <br />Re-girds the mail, and draws the hiked steel, <br />Cold from the twilight battlefields of Time.<br /><br />George Sterling<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/as-it-was-in-the-beginning-3/
