found
To nature and to me so dear,
Could thy dear eyes in following mine
Still sweeten more these banks of Rhine!

ODE TO NAPOLEON

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 worshiped 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[110]--
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[111]
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,[112] 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