mewhat narrow order, what must be the man who
does not look beyond his own frontier or his own sea?
I confess that I dream of the day when an English statesman shall
arise with a heart too large for England; having courage in the face
of his countrymen to assert of some suggested policy,--"This is good
for your trade; this is necessary for your domination: but it will vex
a people hard by; it will hurt a people farther off; it will profit
nothing to the general humanity: therefore, away with it!--it is not
for you or for me." When a British minister dares speak so, and when a
British public applauds him speaking, then shall the nation be
glorious, and her praise, instead of exploding from within, from loud
civic mouths, come to her from without, as all worthy praise must,
from the alliances she has fostered and the populations she has
saved.
And poets who write of the events of that time shall not need to
justify themselves in prefaces for ever so little jarring of the
national sentiment imputable to their rhymes.
ROME: _February 1860_.
NAPOLEON III. IN ITALY.
I.
Emperor, Emperor!
From the centre to the shore,
From the Seine back to the Rhine,
Stood eight millions up and swore
By their manhood's right divine
So to elect and legislate,
This man should renew the line
Broken in a strain of fate
And leagued kings at Waterloo,
When the people's hands let go.
Emperor
Evermore.
II.
With a universal shout
They took the old regalia out
From an open grave that day;
From a grave that would not close,
Where the first Napoleon lay
Expectant, in repose,
As still as Merlin, with his conquering face
Turned up in its unquenchable appeal
To men and heroes of the advancing race,--
Prepared to set the seal
Of what has been on what shall be.
Emperor
Evermore.
III.
The thinkers stood aside
To let the nation act.
Some hated the new-constituted fact
Of empire, as pride treading on their pride.
Some quailed, lest what was poisonous in the past
Should graft itself in that Druidic bough
On this green Now.
Some cursed, because at last
The open heavens to which they had looked in vain
For many a golden fall of marvellous rain
Were closed in brass; and some
Wept on because a gone thing could not come;
And some were silent, doubting all things for
That popular co
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