111.

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.

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!

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.]

2Certaminis gaudia"-the expression of Attila in his harangue to his army, previous to the battle of Chalons, given in Cassiodorus.

VI,

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

Yet better had he neither known

A bigot's shrine, nor despot's throne.

3 ["Like Milo, he would rend the oak; but it closed again, wedged his hands, and now the beasts-lion, bear, down to the dirtiest jackal-may all tear him."B. Diary, April 8.]

4 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 [Charles the Fifth resigned, in 1555, his imperial crown to his brother Ferdinand,

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!

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

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

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 [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 ["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.]

XV.

Thou Timour! in his captive's cage'
What thoughts will there be thine,
While brooding 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,'
Wilt thou withstand the shock?
And share with him, the unforgiven,

2

His vulture and his rock!
Foredoom'd by God-by man accurst,
And that last act, though not thy worst,
The very Fiend's arch mock;"

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 thine-
When 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.

9 The cage of Bajazet, by order of Tamerlane.
2 [In the first draught—

3

"He suffered for kind acts to men,
Who have not seen his like again,

At least of kingly stock;

Since he was good, and thou but great,
Thou canst not quarrel with thy fate."]

"The very fiend's arch mock

1 Prometheus.

To lip a wanton, and suppose her chaste."-SHAKSPEARE.

[He alludes to the unworthy amour in which Napoleon engaged on the evening of his arrival at Fontainebleau.]