of to-day,
Like Nelson, Harold, Hector, Cyrus, Saul,
I had been shifted from this jail of flesh,
To wander as a greatened ghost elsewhere.
--Yes, a good death, to have died on yonder field;
But never a ball came padding down my way!

So, as it is, a miss-mark they will dub me;
And yet--I found the crown of France in the mire,
And with the point of my prevailing sword
I picked it up! But for all this and this
I shall be nothing....
To shoulder Christ from out the topmost niche
In human fame, as once I fondly felt,
Was not for me. I came too late in time
To assume the prophet or the demi-god,
A part past playing now. My only course
To make good showance to posterity
Was to implant my line upon the throne.
And how shape that, if now extinction nears?
Great men are meteors that consume themselves
To light the earth. This is my burnt-out hour.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Thou sayest well. Thy full meridian-shine
Was in the glory of the Dresden days,
When well-nigh every monarch throned in Europe
Bent at thy footstool.

NAPOLEON

Saving always England's--
Rightly dost say "well-nigh."--Not England's,--she
Whose tough, enisled, self-centred, kindless craft
Has tracked me, springed me, thumbed me by the throat,
And made herself the means of mangling me!

SPIRIT IRONIC

Yea, the dull peoples and the Dynasts both,
Those counter-castes not oft adjustable,
Interests antagonistic, proud and poor,
Have for the nonce been bonded by a wish
To overthrow thee.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Peace. His loaded heart
Bears weight enough for one bruised, blistered while!

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Worthless these kneadings of thy narrow thought,
Napoleon; gone thy opportunity!
Such men as thou, who wade across the world
To make an epoch, bless, confuse, appal,
Are in the elemental ages' chart
Like meanest insects on obscurest leaves,
But incidents and grooves of Earth's unfolding;
Or as the brazen rod that stirs the fire
Because it must.

[The moon sinks, and darkness blots out NAPOLEON and the scene.]

AFTER SCENE

THE OVERWORLD

[Enter the Spirit and Chorus of the Years, the Spirit and Chorus
of the Pities, the Shade of the Earth, the Spirits Sinister and
Ironic with