"The Emperor Nepos was acknowledged by the Senate, by the Italians, and by the Provincials of Gaul; his moral virtues, and military talents, were loudly celebrated; and those who derived any private benefit from his government announced in prophetic strains the restoration of public felicity. By this shameful abdication, he protracted his life a few years, in a very ambiguous state, between an Emperor and an Exile, till "GIBBON'S Decline and Fall, vol. vi. p. 220. 1

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["I send you an additional motto from Gibbon, which you will find singularly appropriate."-Lord Byron to Mr. Murray, April 2. 1814.]

ODE

ΤΟ

NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE.1

'Tis done

but yesterday a King!

And arm'd with Kings to strive -
And now thou art a nameless thing.:
So abject yet alive!

Is this the man of thousand thrones,

Who strew'd our earth with hostile bones,

And can he thus survive? 2

[The reader has seen, that Lord Byron, when publishing" The Corsair," in January, 1814, announced an apparently quite serious resolution to withdraw, for some years at least, from poetry. His letters of the February and March following abound in repetitions of the same determination. On the morning of the ninth of April, he writes" No more rhyme for- or rather from me. I have taken my leave of that stage, and henceforth will mountebank it no longer." In the evening, a Gazette Extraordinary announced the abdication of Fontainebleau, and the Poet violated his vows next morning, by composing this Ode, which he immediately published, though without his name. His Diary says," April 10. To-day I have boxed one hour-written an Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte copied it eaten six biscuits-drunk four bottles of soda water, and redde away the rest of my time."]

2 ["I don't know but I think I, even I (an insect compared

Since he, miscall'd the Morning Star,
Nor man nor fiend hath fallen so far.

II.

Ill-minded man! why scourge thy kind
Who bow'd so low the knee?
By gazing on thyself grown blind,
Thou taught'st the rest to see.
With might unquestion'd, -
Thine only gift hath been the
grave,
To those that worshipp'd thee;
Nor till thy fall could mortals guess
Ambition's less than littleness!

III.

power to save, —

Thanks for that lesson it will teach

To after-warriors more,

Than high Philosophy can preach,
And vainly preach'd 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.

with this creature), have set my life on casts not a millionth part of this man's. But, after all, a crown may not be worth dying for. Yet, to outlive Lodi for this!!! Oh that Juvenal or Johnson could rise from the dead! Expende. -quot libras in duce summo invenies?' I knew they were light in the balance of mortality; but I thought their living dust weighed more carats. Alas! this imperial diamond hath a flaw in it, and is now hardly fit to stick in a glazier's pencil; the pen of the historian won't rate it worth a ducat. Psha! something too much of this.' 6 But I won't give him up even now; though all his admirers have, like the Thanes, fallen from him."- Byron Diary, April 9.]

IV.

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 seem'd made but to obey,
Wherewith renown was rife

All quell'd! - Dark Spirit! what must be
The madness of thy memory!

V.

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!

VI.

He who of old would rend the oak,
Dream'd not of the rebound;

1 "Certaminis gaudia"-the expression of Attila in his harangue to his army, previous to the battle of Chalons, given in Cassiodorus.

2 ["Out of town six days. On my return, find my poor little pagod, Napoleon, pushed off his pedestal. It is his own fault. Like Milo, he would rend the oak; but it closed again, wedged his hands, and now the beasts-lion, bear, down to the dirtiest jackall -may all tear him. That Muscovite winter wedged his arms;ever since, he has fought with his feet and teeth. The last may still leave their marks; and 'I guess now' (as the Yankees say), that he will yet play them a pass."— Byron Diary, April 8.]

Chain'd by the trunk he vainly broke
Alone how look'd 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!

VII.

The Roman, 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 glory was that hour
Of self-upheld abandon'd power.

VIII.

The Spaniard, when the lust of sway
Had lost its quickening spell, 2
Cast crowns for rosaries away,
An empire for a cell;

1 Sylla.-[We find the germ of this stanza in the Diary of the evening before it was written :-"Methinks Sylla did better; for he revenged, and resigned in the height of his sway, red with the slaughter of his foes-the finest instance of glorious contempt of the rascals upon record. Dioclesian did well too - Amurath not amiss, had he become aught except a dervise- Charles the Fifth but so so; but Napoleon worst of all."- Byron Diary, April 9.]

2 [" Alter potent spell' to 'quickening spell:' the first (as Polonius says) is a vile phrase,' and means nothing, besides being common-place and Rosa-Matildaish. After the resolution of not publishing, though our Ode is a thing of little length and less consequence it will be better altogether that it is anonymous."- Lord Byron to Mr. Murray, April 11.]