The blood-stained hosts of the battlefield in all their fierce array,
Ghastly beneath their glowing helms the grinning skulls appear,
And countless weapons high in air their bony hands uprear.
. . . . . . .
The weird scene which these verses describe has been depicted by Raffet, in one of whose lithographs the spectre of the great Emperor is shown passing a review of a phantom army.
Another translation of the “Midnight Review” was written by Mr. Leitch Ritchie, a well-known writer in his day, who at one time edited the Era, and also did a good deal of work for publications like the Keepsake and Heath’s Picturesque Annual. This version has not, to the best of my knowledge, been reprinted since it first appeared in a quarterly magazine (now somewhat difficult to obtain), about seventy-seven years ago, which will be my excuse for giving it here side by side with a French version which, it may be added, the Government of Charles X. sought to suppress. Though no great poetic genius is shown in Mr. Ritchie’s lines, avowedly a word for word translation, the writer may nevertheless be said to have caught something of the simple and impressive dignity which caused the German poem to create such a sensation when it first appeared, some six or seven years after the Emperor’s death.
“THE MIDNIGHT REVIEW”
THE MIDNIGHT REVIEW
Nachts um die zwölfte Stunde
Verlasst der Tambour sein Grabe,