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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 hast done at length,

And darker fate hast 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.

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All evil spirit as thou art,

It is enough to grieve the heart
To see thine own unstrung;

To think that God's fair world hath been
The footstool of a thing so mean!

And Earth hath spilt her blood for him,
Who thus can hoard his own!

And monarchs bowed the trembling limb,
And thanked him for a throne!
Fair Freedom! we may hold thee dear,
When thus thy mightiest foes their fear
In humblest guise have shown.
O, ne'er may tyrant leave behind
A brighter name to lure mankind!

Thine evil deeds are writ in gore,
Nor written thus in vain;
Thy triumphs tell of fame no more,
Or deepen every stain.

If thou hadst died as honor dies,
Some new Napoleon might arise,
To shame the world again;
But who would soar the solar height,
To set in such a starless night?

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While brooding in thy prisoned rage?
But one, 66
'The world was mine!"
Unless, like him of Babylon,
All sense is with thy scepter gone,
Life will not long confine
That spirit poured so widely forth,
So long obeyed, so little worth!

Or, like the thief of fire from heaven,
Wilt thou withstand the shock?
And share with him, the unforgiven,
His vulture and his rock!
Foredoomed by God, by man accurst,
And that last act, though not thy worst,
The very fiend's arch mock:
He in his fall preserved his pride,
And, if a mortal, had as proudly died !

NAPOLEON.

FROM "CHILDE HAROLD."

LORD BYRON.

Yet well thy soul hath brooked the turning
tide

With that untaught innate philosophy,
Which, be it wisdom, coldness, or deep pride,
Is gall and wormwood to an enemy.

When the whole host of hatred stood hard by,
To watch and mock thee shrinking, thou hast
smiled

With a sedate and all-enduring eye,

When Fortune fled her spoiled and favorite child,

He stood unbowed beneath the ills upon him piled.

Sager than in thy fortunes; for in them
Ambition steeled thee on too far to show
That just habitual scorn which could contemn
Men and their thoughts; 't was wise to feel,

not so

To wear it ever on thy lip and brow,

And spurn the instruments thou wert to use Till they were turned unto thine overthrow; 'T is but a worthless world to win or lose;

THERE sunk the greatest, nor the worst of men, So hath it proved to thee, and all such lot who
Whose spirit antithetically mixed

One moment of the mightiest, and again
On little objects with like firmness fixed,
Extreme in all things! hadst thou been betwixt,
Thy throne had still been thine, or never been;
For daring made thy rise as fall: thou seek'st
Even now to reassume the imperial mien,
And shake again the world, the Thunderer of the
scene!

Conqueror and captive of the earth art thou!
She trembles at thee still, and thy wild name
Was ne'er more bruited in men's minds than

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More than thy meanest soldier taught to yield: An empire thou couldst crush, command, rebuild,

choose.

If, like a tower upon a headlong rock,

Thou hadst been made to stand or fall alone, Such scorn of man had helped to brave the shock;

But men's thoughts were the steps which paved
thy throne,

Their admiration thy best weapon shone ;
The part of Philip's son was thine, not then
(Unless aside thy purple had been thrown)
Like stern Diogenes to mock at men ;
For sceptered cynics earth were far too wide a den.

But quiet to quick bosoms is a hell,
And there hath been thy bane; there is a fire
And motion of the soul which will not dwell
In its own narrow being, but aspire
Beyond the fitting medium of desire;
And, but once kindled, quenchless evermore,
Preys upon high adventure, nor can tire
Of aught but rest; a fever at the core,
Fatal to him who bears, to all who ever bore.

This makes the madmen who have made men mad

By their contagion! Conquerors and Kings, Founders of sects and systems, to whom add Sophists, Bards, Statesmen, all unquiet things Which stir too strongly the soul's secret springs, And are themselves the fools to those they fool; Envied, yet how unenviable ! what stings Are theirs! One breast laid open were a school Nor learn that tempted Fate will leave the lofti- Which would unteach mankind the lust to shine

But govern not thy pettiest passion, nor
However deeply in men's spirits skilled,
Look through thine own, nor curb the lust of

war,

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Their breath is agitation, and their life
A storm whereon they ride, to sink at last,
And yet so nursed and bigoted to strife,
That should their days, surviving perils past,
Melt to calm twilight, they feel overcast
With sorrow and supineness, and so die ;
Even as a flame, unfed, which runs to waste
With its own flickering, or a sword laid by,
Which eats into itself, and rusts ingloriously.

He who ascends to mountain-tops shall find
The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and

snow;

He who surpasses or subdues mankind
Must look down on the hate of those below.
Though high above the sun of glory glow,
And far beneath the earth and ocean spread,
Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow
Contending tempests on his naked head,
And thus reward the toils which to those summits
led.

LORD BYRON.

ON THE DEATH OF THE DUKE OF REICH-
STADT (NAPOLEON II.).

HEIR of that name

Which shook with sudden terror the far earth!
Child of strange destinies e'en from thy birth,
When kings and princes round thy cradle

came,

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Trebling a mother's tenderness for thee?
Despoiled heir of empire! on her breast
Did thy young head repose in its unrest?

No! round her heart
Children of humbler, happier lineage twined;
Thou couldst but bring dark memories to mind,
Of pageants where she bore a heartless part:
She who shared not her monarch-husband's doom
Cared little for her first-born's living tomb.
Thou art at rest,

And gave their crowns, as playthings, to thine Child of Ambition's martyr! Life had been

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Those were his words: I 've treasured up With pride that same wine-cup;

And for its weight in gold

It never shall be sold !"

"Mother, on that proud relic let us gaze. O, keep that cup always!"

"But through some fatal witchery

He, whom a pope had crowned and blest, Perished, my sons, by foulest treachery, Cast on an isle far in the lonely West! Long time sad rumors were afloat,

The fatal tidings we would spurn,
Still hoping from that isle remote
Once more our hero would return.
But when the dark announcement drew
Tears from the virtuous and the brave,
When the sad whisper proved too true,
A flood of grief I to his memory gave.
Peace to the glorious dead!"

"Mother, may God his fullest blessing shed Upon your aged head!"

FRANCIS MAHONY (FATHER PROUT).

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To see the French war-steamers speeding over
When the fog cleared away.

From its one heart a nation wailed, for well the startled sense divined

A greater power had fled away than aught that now remained behind.

Sullen and silent, and like couchant lions,
Their cannon, through the night,
Holding their breath, had watched in grim de- The scathed and haggard face, and look so bright
fiance

The sea-coast opposite;

with sword-like thought

Had been to many a million hearts the all between themselves and naught;

And now they roared, at drum-beat, from their And so they stood aghast and pale, as if they

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The lamp that, mid the sacred cell, on heavenly forms its glory sheds,

Untended dies, and in the gloom a poisonous vapor glimmering spreads.

NOT oft before has peopled earth sent up so It shines and flares, and reeling ghosts enormous deep and wide a groan,

through the twilight swell,

As when the word swept over France, "The life Till o'er the withered world and heart rings loud

of Mirabeau is flown!"

and slow the dooming knell.

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