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ODE TO NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE

Expende Annibalem :-quot libras in duce summo Invenies? JUVENAL, Sat. x. "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.

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p. 220. [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 hourwritten an Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte copied it eaten six biscuits - drunk four bottles of soda water, and redde away the rest of my time.']

"T is 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?
Since he, miscall'd the Morning Star,
Nor man nor fiend hath fallen so far.

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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.

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;

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!

Thine evil deeds are writ in gore,
Nor written thus in vain -
Thy triumphs tell of fame no more,
Ör 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?

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:

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

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

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How bears her breast the torturing hour?
Still elings 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 vanish'd diadem!

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