The prayer of Charles, that rose amidst the gloom Of the dead Charlemagne's majestic tomb, Might fitly find an echo on the lips Of the young Prince, whose pathway death's eclipse Hath twice enshadowed in so brief a space. Grandsire and Sire! Stout slip of a strong race, Valiant old age and vigorous manhood fail, And leave youth, high with hope, with anguish pale, In vigil at their tomb! Watch on, and kneel, Those clenched hands crossed upon the sheathèd steel. Not lightly such inheritance should fall. Hear you not through the gloom the glorious call Of Valour, Duty, Freedom? ... And youth must face What snowy age and stalwart manhood found A weight of sorrow, though with splendour crowned. Young Hohenzollern, soldierly of soul, Heaven fix your heart on a yet nobler goal Than sword may hew its way to. Those you mourn Heroes of the Great War when France was torn With Teuton shot, knew that the sword alone May rear, but shall not long support a throne. William has passed, bowing his silver crest, Like an old Sea King going to his rest; Frederick, in fullest prime, with failing breath, But an heroic heart, has stooped to death: Here, at their tomb, another Emperor keeps His vigil, whilst Germania bows and weeps. Heaven hold that sword unsheathed in that young hand, And crown with power and peace the Fatherland! Only a fortnight before the death of the old Emperor, Bismarck's Army Bill had awakened _Punch's_ misgivings. He reluctantly admired the strength of the lion combined with the shrewdness of the fox; and put into Bismarck's mouth the sonorous couplet:-- I speak of Peace, while covert enmity Under the smile of safety wounds the world. [Illustration: A WISE WARNING (_Founded on the first part of an old Fable of Dædalus and Icarus, the Sequel of which Mr. Punch trusts may never apply._)] But by September it was the young Kaiser, not Bismarck, who invited "A Word in Season." The counsel was prompted by a speech in which he declared, "It is the pride of the Hohenzollerns to reign at once over the noblest, the most intellectual and most cultured of nations," a sentiment mild when compared with later utterances, yet sufficiently thrasonic to earn a rebuke for indulging in demagogic flattery, coupled with the advice to read Lord Wolseley's article in the _Fortnightly_ on Marlborough, Wellington and Napoleon, and to emulate the reticence of Moltke. In less than a month the inevitable cleavage between the Kaiser and his Chancellor is foreshadowed in the splendid cartoon reproduced, where Bismarck as Dædalus warns Wilhelm as Icarus, in a paraphrase of Ovid:-- My son, observe the middle path to fly, And fear to sink too low, or rise too high. Here the sun melts, there vapours damp your force, Between the two extremes direct your course.