VIII.

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

A strict accountant of his beads,
A subtle disputant on creeds,
His dotage trifled well :5

Yet better had he neither known
A bigot's shrine, nor despot's throne.

IX.

But thou-from thy reluctant hand
The thunderbolt is wrung-
Too late thou leav'st the high command
To which thy weakness clung;

All Evil Spirit as thou art,

It is enough to grieve the heart

To see thine own unstrung;

To think that God's fair world hath been The footstool of a thing so mean;

X.

And Earth hath spilt her blood for him,
Who thus can hoard his own!

And Monarchs bow'd the trembling limb,
And thank'd him for a throne !
Fair Freedom! we may hold thee dear,
When thus thy mightiest foes their fear
In humblest guise have shown.
Oh! ne'er may tyrant leave behind
A brighter name to lure mankind!

ΧΙ.

Thine evil deeds are writ in gore,
Nor written thus in vain -
Thy triumphs tell of fame no more,
Or deepen every stain :

If thou hadst died as honour dies,
Some new Napoleon might arise,
To shame the world again-
But who would soar the solar height,
To set in such a starless night?"

XII.

Weigh'd in the balance, hero dust
Is vile as vulgar clay;
Thy scales, Mortality! are just
To all that pass away:

But yet methought the living great
Some higher sparks should animate,
To dazzle and dismay :

Nor deem'd Contempt could thus make mirth
Of these, the Conquerors of the earth.

XIII.

And she, proud Austria's mournful flower,
Thy still imperial bride;

How bears her breast the torturing hour?
Still clings she to thy side?

Must she too bend, must she too share
Thy late repentance, long despair,

Thou throneless Homicide?

If still she loves thee, hoard that gem,"Tis worth thy vanished diadem !7

XIV.

Then haste thee to thy sullen Isle,
And gaze upon the sea;

That element may meet thy smile-
It ne'er was ruled by thee!
Or trace with thine all idle hand
In loitering mood upon the sand
That Earth is now as free!

That Corinth's pedagogue hath now
Transferr'd his by-word to thy brow.

XV.

Thou Timour! in his captive's cage9
What thoughts will there be thine,
While broooding in thy prison'd rage?
But one "The world was mine!"
Unless, like he of Babylon,

All sense is with thy sceptre gone,
Life will not long confine
That spirit pour'd so widely forth-
So long obey'd-so little worth!

XVI.

Or, like the thief of fire from heaven,10
Wilt thou withstand the shock?
And share with him, the unforgiven,
His vulture and his rock!
Foredoom'd by God--by man accurst,11
And that last act, though not thy worst,
The very Fiend's arch mock;

12

He in his fall preserved his pride,

And, if a mortal, had as proudly died!

XVII.

There was a day-there was an hour, While earth was Gaul's-Gaul thineWhen that immeasurable power

Unsated to resign

Had been an act of purer fame
Than gathers round Marengo's name
And gilded thy decline,

Through the long twilight of all time,
Despite some passing clouds of crime.

XVIII.

But thou forsooth must be a king,
And don the purple vest,
As if that foolish robe could wring
Remembrance from thy breast.
Where is that faded garment? where
The gewgaws thou wert fond to wear,
The star, the string, the crest?
Vain froward child of empire! say,
Are all thy playthings snatch'd away?

XIX.

Where may the wearied eye repose
When gazing on the Great;
Where neither guilty glory glows,
Nor despicable state?

Yes-one-the first-the last-the best-
The Cincinnatus of the West,

Whom envy dared not hate, Bequeath'd the name of Washington,

To make man blush there was but one!

NOTES TO THE ODE TO NAPOLEON

BUONAPARTE.

1.-Page 291, line 7.

And can he thus survive?

["I DON'T know-but I think I, even I (an insect compared 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.' But I won't give him up even now; though all his admirers have, like the Thanes, fallen from him."-Byron Diary, April 9.]

2.-Page 292, line 2.

The rapture of the strife

'C'ertaminis gaulia"-the expression of Attila in his harangue to his army, previous to the battle of Chalons, given in Cassiodorus.

3.-Page 292, line 20.

am'd not of the rebound;

["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."-B. Diary, April 8.]

4.-Page 292, line 28.

The Roman, when his burning heart

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."-B. Diary, April 9.]

5.-Page 293, line 7.

His dotage trifled well:

[Charles the Fifth resigned, in 1555, his imperial crown to his brother Ferdinand, and the kingdom of Spain to his son Philip, and retired to a monastery in Estremadura, where he conformed to all the rigour of monastic austerity. Not satisfied with this, he dressed himself in his shroud, was laid in his coffin, joined in the prayers which were offered up for the rest of his soul, and mingled his tears with those which his attendants shed, as if they had been celebrating a real funeral.]

6.-Page 293, line 36.

To set in such a starless night?

["But who would rise in brightest day
To set without one parting ray?"-MS.]

7.-Page 294, line 18.

'Tis worth thy vanished diadem!

[It is well known that Count Neipperg, a gentleman in the suite of the Emperor of Austria, who was first presented to Maria Louisa within a few days after Napoleon's abdication, became, in the sequel, her chamberlain, and then her husband. He is said to have been remarkably plain. The Count died in 1831.]

8. Page 294, line 26.

That Corinth's pedagogue hath now

"Dionysius at Corinth was yet a king to this."-B. Diary, April 9. Dionysius the Younger, esteemed a greater tyrant than his father, on being for the second time banished from Syracuse, retired to Corinth, where he was obliged to turn schoolmaster for a subsistence.]

9.-Page 294, line 28.

Thou Timour! in his captive's cage

The cage of Bajazet, by order of Tamerlane.

10.-Page 295, line 1.

Or, like the thief of fire from heaven,

Prometheus.