Even so, bewildered, stunned, aghast,
Earth at the tale is dumb,
Pondering the final agonies
Of him, the man of fate,
And wondering when, with tread like his,
Again to desolate
Her trampled fields, all dust and blood,
A mortal foot shall come.
Him, upon his refulgent throne,
In silence could my soul survey,
And when, by varying fortunes blown,
fell again and lay,
My spirit to the millions' tone
Echoed back no reply;
Virgin alike from servile praise
And cowardly abuse;
But now, as wane the meteor's rays,
I let my genius loose,
To fall upon his urn one strain
Perchance that shall not die.
From the Alps to the Pyramids,
From the Manzanar to the Rhine,
He tracked his eagles, as the bolt
Follows its flashing sign.
From Tanais to Scylla glancing,
From the West to the Eastern brine; Was this true greatness? That high doom
Let after times declare;
We to the Greatest bow, from whom
He held so large a share
Of the Most High, creative mind,
Stamped by the hand divine.
The tremulous, tempestuous joy
Of lofty enterprise - the heart
That knew no rest from its employ,
But burned to play the imperial part;
And won and kept a prize whose dream
Had madness seemed, at best-
All he had proved and passed ·
That after danger brightest smiled,
Defeat and flight, and victory's crown,
A ruler now, and now exiled, —
Twice humbled in the dust, defiled,
Twice at the altar blest.
Two ages, 'gainst each other armed,
Him for their umpire named,
Looking on him as Fate: he charmed
To silence their contentions - tamed
Their frantic feuds, and sat supreme
Their factious rage above:
He vanished and his vacant days
Spent in so small a sphere!
Majestic mark for envy's gaze,
And pity most sincere
For unextinguishable hate,
And never-vanquished love.
As on the shipwrecked seaman's head The o'erwhelming breakers pour,
Beyond whose foaming fury spread
Around him and before,
The wretch had vainly gazed to see
The intangible, far strand:
Thus o'er that strong but sinking soul
Swept Memory's whelming tide,
As oft his actions to enroll
In Fame's recórds he tried;
But from the everlasting scroll
Fell, faint, his harassed hand.
O, at the silent, dying hour
Of some dull day of rest,
His lightning eyes in sullen lower,
And his arms folded on his breast,
How often have his days of power
Rushed on remembrance thick!
Then to his backward-roving thought
The moving tents, the trench, the course,
The gleaming squadrons have been brought,
The sea-like surging of the horse,
The martial word, the swift command,
The obedience, no less quick.
Alas! at such an overthrow
Haply that panting spirit failed;
Haply despairing drooped: but, lo!
The Omnipotent from heaven hailed
His child, and unto purer air,
With pitying hand conveyed;
And through the flowery paths of hope
Dismissed him to the eternal fields,
Where more than even his lofty scope
Perfect fruition yields,
And where the glory that hath past
Is silence now, and shade.
Beneficent, immortal, fair,
Faith holds her wonted triumph yet:
Write this besides: Rejoice! for ne'er
Did haughtier potentate forget
His pride, and meekly bow at last,
To Golgotha's disgrace.
Thou, o'er his weary dust, each low
Calumnious word forbear;
The God from whom afflictions flow,
All comfort and all care,
Beside him deigned, on his low bed,
To find a resting-place.
Alessandro Manzoni. Tr. T. W. Parsons.
ND this is St. Helena? This the spot
Haunted forever by an Emperor !
Methinks 't were meet that such a royal ghost
Should pace these gloomy battlements by night!
The ship veered off, and we passed out to sea :
And in the first fair moonrise of the month,
I watched the island, till it seemed a speck
No bigger than Astarte. Year by year,
The picture came and went upon my brain,
Like frost-work on the windows in my dreams
I saw those jagged turrets of dull rock
Uplifted in the moonlight; saw the gulls
Darting in sudden circles; heard the low
And everlasting anthem of the sea!
And from the nether world a voice would come,
Here did they bring the Corsican, and here
Died the chained eagle by these dismal cliffs!
IS falchion flashed along the Nile,
His host he led through Alpine snows,
O'er Moscow's towers, that blazed the while,
His eagle-flag unrolled - and froze!
Here sleeps he now, alone!—not one,
Of all the kings whose crowns he gave
Bends o'er his dust; nor wife nor son
Has ever seen or sought his grave.
Behind the sea-girt rock the star
That led him on from crown to crown
Has sunk, and nations from afar
Gazed as it faded and went down.
High is his tomb: the ocean flood,
Far, far below, by storms is curled,
As round him heaved, while high he stood,
A stormy and unstable world.
|