vion so
much that was third-rate and bad. His pieces are much _too_
occasional, for he was prone to indulgence in hasty verse whenever the
fit was upon him, or as a method of enlisting public sympathy with his
own misconduct, so that he was constantly appearing before the world
as a perfidious sentimentalist, with a false air of lamentation over
the misfortunes which he had brought upon himself, as in the Poems of
the Separation. Yet when he shook off his personal grief and took to
politics, no other poet could more vividly express his intense living
interest in the great events of his time, or strike the proper note of
some great catastrophe. It may be affirmed that the _Ode to Napoleon_
is better than anything else that has been written in English upon the
most astonishing career in modern history:

'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.'

In the first of these two stanzas the seventh line is weak and breaks
the rapid rush of the verse; but the high pressure and impetus of the
poem are sustained throughout twenty stanzas, producing the effect of
an improvisatore who stops rather from want of breath than from any
other lack of inspiration. In this respect the ode is a rare poetical
exploit; for all poems composed under the spur of the moment, upon
some memorable incident that has just startled the world, must be more
or less improvised, and must hit the right pitch of extraordinary
popular emotion. It is the difficulty of turning out good work under
such arduous conditions that has too often shipwrecked or stranded
some unlucky laureate.

There is one province of verse, if not exactly of poetry, in which
Byron reigns undisputedly, though it is far distant from the land of
lyrics. In his latest and longest production, _Don Juan_, he tells us
that his 'sere fancy has fallen into the yellow leaf':

'And the sad truth whic