Statistics
Napoleon shifted Restless in the old sarcophagus And murmured to a watchguard: “Who goes there?” “Twenty-one million men, Soldiers, armies, guns, Twenty-one millionAfoot, horseback, In the air, Under the sea.” And Napoleon turned to his sleep: “It is not my world answering; It is some dreamer who knows not The world I marched in From Calais to Moscow.” And he slept on In the old sarcophagus While the aeroplanes Droned their motors Between Napoleon’s mausoleum And the cool night stars.
Statistics - meaning Summary
History Measured as Abstraction
The poem stages Napoleon in his tomb hearing a watchguard recite vast, impersonal numbers of modern warfare. He dismisses the tally as a dreamer’s ignorance of the lived experience of marching from Calais to Moscow, distinguishing human agency from abstract statistics. The buzzing aeroplanes and night sky emphasize a technological, dehumanized scale of conflict that outlives and misunderstands individual military glory.
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