POEMS.

POEMS.

ODE TO NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE.

"Tis done-but yesterday a King!

And armed with Kings to strive —
And now thou art a nameless thing:
So abject-yet alive!

Is this the man of thousand thrones,
Who strewed our earth with hostile bones,
And can he thus survive?

Since he, miscalled the Morning Star,
Nor man nor fiend hath fallen so far.

Ill-minded man! why scourge thy kind,

Who bowed so low the knee?

By gazing on thyself grown blind,
Thou taught'st the rest to see.

With might unquestioned, power to save,
Thine only gift hath been the grave

To those that worshipped thee; Nor till thy fall could mortals guess Ambition's less than littleness!

Thanks for that lesson-it will teach
To after-warriors more

Than high Philosophy can preach,
And vainly preached before.
That spell upon the minds of men
Breaks never to unite again,

That led them to adore

Those Pagod things of sabre-sway,

With fronts of brass, and feet of clay.

The triumph and the vanity,
The rapture of the strife-
The earthquake voice of Victory,
To thee the breath of life;

The sword, the sceptre, and that sway
Which man seemed made but to obey,

Wherewith renown was rife

All quelled! - Dark Spirit! what must be The madness of thy memory!

The Desolator desolate!

The Victor overthrown!

The Arbiter of others' fate

A Suppliant for his own!

Is it some yet imperial hope

That with such change can calmly cope?

Or dread of death alone?

To die a prince or live a slave-
Thy choice is most ignobly brave!

He who of old would rend the oak,
Dreamed not of the rebound;

Chained by the trunk he vainly broke

Alone how looked he round?

Thou, in the sternness of thy strength,
An equal deed has done at length,
And darker fate has found;
He fell, the forest-prowlers' prey,
But thou must eat thy heart away!

The Roman, when his burning heart
Was slaked with blood of Rome,
Threw down the dagger - dared depart,
In savage grandeur, home. —

He dared depart in utter scorn
Of men that such a yoke had borne,
Yet left him such a doom!

His only glory was that hour
Of self-upheld abandoned power.

The Spaniard, when the lust of sway
Had lost its quickening spell,
Cast crowns for rosaries away,
An empire for a cell;

A strict accountant of his beads,
A subtle disputant on creeds,
His dotage trifled well:

Yet better had he neither known

A bigot's shrine, nor despot's throne.

But thou

from thy reluctant hand

The thunderbolt is wrung