re!
Through fifteen years her hard hoofs' rapid course
So ground the generations,
And she passed smoking in her speed and force
Over the breast of nations;
Till,--tired in ne'er earned goal to place vain trust,
To tread a path ne'er left behind,
To knead the universe and like a dust
To uplift scattered human kind,--
Feebly and worn, and gasping as she trode,
Stumbling each step of her career,
She craved for rest the Corsican who rode.
But, torturer! you would not hear;
You pressed her harder with your nervous thigh,
You tightened more the goading bit,
Choked in her foaming mouth her frantic cry,
And brake her teeth in fury-fit.
She rose,--but the strife came. From farther fall
Saved not the curb she could not know,--
She went down, pillowed on the cannon-ball,
And thou wert broken by the blow!

Now born again, from depths where thou wert hurled,
A radiant eagle dost thou rise;
Winging thy flight again to rule the world,
Thine image reascends the skies.
No longer now the robber of a crown,--
The insolent usurper,--he,
With cushions of a throne, unpitying, down
Who pressed the throat of Liberty,--
Old slave of the Alliance, sad and lone,
Who died upon a sombre rock,
And France's image until death dragged on
For chain, beneath the stranger's stroke,--
NAPOLEON stands, unsullied by a stain:
Thanks to the flatterer's tuneful race
The lying poets who ring praises vain,
Has Caesar 'mong the gods found place!
His image to the city-walls gives light;
His name has made the city's hum,--
Still sounded ceaselessly, as through the fight
It echoed farther than the drum.
From the high suburbs, where the people crowd,
Doth Paris, an old pilgrim now,
Each day descend to greet the pillar proud,
And humble there his monarch brow;--
The arms encumbered with a mortal wreath,
With flowers for that bronze's pall,
(No mothers look on, as they pass beneath,--
It grew beneath their tears so tall!)--
In working-vest, in drunkenness of soul,
Unto the fife's and trumpet's tone,
Doth joyous Paris dance the Carmagnole
Around the great Napoleon.

Thus, Gentle Monarchs, pass unnoted on!
Mild Pastors of Mankind, away!
Sages, depart, as common brows have gone,
Devoid of the immortal ray!
For vainly you make light the people's chain;
And vainly, like a calm floc