Like the water-spout from ocean,
With a strong and growing motion-
It soars, and mingles in the air,
With that of lost LABEDOYERE-
With that of him whose honor'd grave
Contains the "bravest of the brave."
A crimson cloud it spreads and glows,
But shall return to whence it rose;
When 'tis full 'twill burst asunder-
Never yet was heard such thunder
As then shall shake the world with wonder-
Never yet was seen such lightning
As o'er heaven shall then be bright'ning!
Like the Wormwood Star foretold
By the sainted Seer of old,
Show'ring down a fiery flood,
Turning rivers into blood.*
The Chief has fallen, but not by you,
Vanquishers of Waterloo!
When the soldier citizen
Sway'd not o'er his fellow men-
Save in deeds that led them on
Where glory smiled on Freedom's son-
Who, of all the despot's banded,
With that youthful chief competed?
Who could boast o'er France defeated,
Till lone Tyranny commanded?
Till, goaded by ambition's sting,
The Hero sunk into the King?
Then he fell :-So perish all,
Who would men by man enthral!
And thou too of the snow-white plume!
Whose realm refused thee ev'n a tomb;†
Better hadst thou still been leading
France o'er hosts of hirelings bleeding,
Than sold thyself to death and shame
For a meanly royal name;
Such as he of Naples wears,
Who thy blood-bought title bears.
Little didst thou deem, when dashing
On thy war-horse through the ranks,
Like a stream which burst its banks,
While helmets cleft, and sabres clashing,
Shone and shiver'd fast around thee-
Of the fate at last which found thee:
Was that haughty plume laid low
By a slave's dishonest blow?
Once-as the moon sways o'er the tide,
It roll'd in air, the warrior's guide;
Through the smoke-created night
Of the black and sulphurous fight,
The soldier raised his seeking eye
To catch that crest's ascendancy,-
ee Rev, chap. viii. verse 7, &c. "The first angel sounded, and there ed hail and fire mingled with blood," &c.
་ se 8. "And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain ng with fire was cast into the sea; and the third part of the sea became
Verse 10. "And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from earn, burning as it were a lamp; and it fell upon the third part of the Avert, and upon the fountains of waters."
Verse 11. "And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter."
Murat's remains are said to have been torn from the grave and burnt.
And, as it onward rolling rose,
So moved his heart upon our foes,
There, where death's brief pang was quickest,
And the battle's wreck lay thickest,
Strew'd beneath the advancing banner
Of the eagle's burning crest-
(There with thunder-clouds to fan her,
Who could then her wing arrest-
Victory beaming from her breast?)
While the broken line enlarging
Fell, or fled along the plain;
There be sure was MURAT charging!
There he ne'er shall charge again!
O'er glories gone the invaders march,
Weeps Triumph o'er each levell'd arch-
But let Freedom rejoice,
With her heart in her voice;
But, her hand on her sword,
Doubly shall she be adored;
France has twice too well been taught
The "moral lesson" dearly bought-
Her safety sits not on a throne,
With CAPET or NAPOLEON!
But in equal rights and laws,
Hearts and hands in one great cause-
Freedom, such as God hath given
Unto all beneath his heaven,
With their breath, and from their birth,
Though Guilt would sweep it from the earth;
With a fierce and lavish hand
Scattering nations' wealth like sand;
Pouring nations' blood like water,
In imperial seas of slaughter!
But the heart and the mind,
And the voice of mankind,
Shall arise in communion-
And who shall resist that proud union?
The time is past when swords subdued-
Man may die-the soul's renew'd:
Even in this low world of care
Freedom ne'er shall want an heir;
Millions breathe but to inherit
Her for ever bounding spirit-
When once more her hosts assemble,
Tyrants shall believe and tremble-
Smile they at this idle threat?
Crimson tears will follow yet
"ALL WEPT, BUT PARTICULARLY SAVARY, AND A POLISH OFFICER WHO HAD BEEN EXALTED FROM THE RANKS BY BONAPARTE. HE CLUNG TO HIS MASTER'S KNEES; WROTE A LETTER TO LORD KEITH, ENTREATING PERMISSION TO ACCOMPANY HIM, IN THE MOST MENIAL CAPACITY, WHICH COULD NOT BE ADMITTED."
MUST thou go, my glorious Chief, Sever'd from thy faithful few? Who can tell thy warrior's grief, Maddening o'er that long adieu?
Farewell to thee, France!-but when Liberty rallies
Once more in thy regions, remember me then-
The violet still grows in the depth of thy valleys;
Though wither'd, thy tears will unfold it again-
Yet, yet, I may baffle the hosts that surround us,
And yet may thy heart leap awake to my voice-
There are links which must break in the chain that
has bound us,
Then turn thee and call on the Chief of thy choice.
WRITTEN ON A BLANK LEAF OF "THE PLEASURES OF MEMORY."
ABSENT or present, still to thee,
My friend, what magic spells belong!
As all can tell, who share, like me,
In turn thy converse, and thy song.
But when the dreaded hour shall come
By Friendship ever deem'd too nigh,
And "MEMORY" o'er her Druid's tomb
Shall weep that aught of thee can die,
How fondly will she then repay
Thy homage offer'd at her shrine,
And blend, while ages roll away,
Her name immortally with thine!
April 19th, 1812.
ROUSSEAU-Voltaire-our Gibbon-and de Staël-
* Leman! these names are worthy of thy shore,
Thy shore of names like these! wert thou no more,
Their memory thy remembrance would recall;
To them thy banks were lovely as to all,
But they have made them lovelier, for the lore
Of mighty minds doth hallow in the core
Of human hearts the ruin of a wall
Where dwelt the wise and wond'rous; but by thee How much more, Lake of Beauty! do we feel, In sweetly gliding o'er thy crystal sea, The wild glow of that not ungentle zeal, Which of the heirs of immortality
Is proud, and makes the breath of glory real!
Then when nature around me is smiling, The last smile which answers to mine, I do not believe it beguiling,
Because it reminds me of thine; And when winds are at war with the ocean, As the breasts I believed in with me, If their billows excite an emotion,
It is that they bear me from thee.
Though the rock of my last hope is shiver'd, And its fragments are sunk in the wave, Though I feel that my soul is deliver'd
To pain-it shall not be its slave. There is many a pang to pursue me:
They may crush, but they shall not contemnThey may torture, but shall not subdue me "Tis of thee that I think-not of them.
Though human, thou didst not deceive me,
Though woman, thou didst not forsake,
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,
Though slander'd, thou never couldst shake,-
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me,
Though parted, it was not to fly,
Though watchful, it was not to defame me,
Nor mute, that the world might belie.
Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it,
Nor the war of the many with one-
If my soul was not fitted to prize it,
'Twas folly not sooner to shun:
And if dearly that error hath cost me,
And more than I once could foresee,
I have found that, whatever it lost me,
It could not deprive me of thee.
From the wreck of the past, which hath perish' Thus much I at least may recall,
It hath taught me that what I most cherish'd Deserved to be dearest of all:
In the desert a fountain is springing,
In the wide waste there still is a tree, And a bird in the solitude singing, Which speaks to my spirit of thee.
To look once more into each other's face:
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire-but hour by hour
They fell and faded-and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash-and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled,
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
A FACT LITERALLY RENDERED.
I STOOD beside the grave of him who blazed
The comet of a season, and I saw
The humblest of all sepulchres, and gazed
With not the less of sorrow and of awe
On that neglected turf and quiet stone,
With name no clearer than the names unknown,
Which lay unread around it; and I ask'd
The Gardener of that ground, why it might be
That for this plant strangers his memory task'd
Through the thick deaths of half a century;
And thus he answer'd-" Well, I do not know
Why frequent travellers turn to pilgrims so;
He died before my day of Sextonship,
And gnash'd their teeth and howled: the wild birds And I had not the digging of this grave
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd'
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless-they were slain for food:
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again;-a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails-men
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And is this all? I thought,-and do we rip
The veil of Immortality? and crave
I know not what of honor and of light
Through unborn ages, to endure this blight?
So soon and so successless? As I said,
The Architect of all on which we tread,
For Earth is but a tombstone, did essay
To extricate remembrance from the clay,
Whose minglings might confuse a Newton's thought
Were it not that all life must end in one,
Of which we are but dreamers;-as he caught
As 'twere the twilight of a former Sun,
Thus spoke he,-"I believe the man of whom
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh; You wot, who lies in this selected tomb,
The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the drooping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer'd not with a caress-he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
Was a most famous writer in his day,
And therefore travellers step from out their way
To pay him honor,-and myself whate'er
Your honor pleases,"-then most pleased I shook
From out my pocket's avaricious nook
Some certain coins of silver, which as 'twere
Perforce I gave this man, though I could spare
So much but inconveniently;-Ye smile,
And they were enemies; they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they raked up,
And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects-saw, and shriek'd, and died-
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless-
A lump of death-a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still.
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge-
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expired before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them-She was the universe.
I see ye, ye profane ones! all the while,
Because my homely phrase the truth would tell.
You are the fools, not I-for I did dwell
With a deep thought, and with a soften'd eye,
On that Old Sexton's natural homily,
In which there was Obscurity and Fame,
The Glory and the Nothing of a Name.
TITIAN! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of wo,
Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless.
Titian! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;
And the inexorable Heaven,
And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
The ruling principle of Hate,
Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refused thee even the boon to die:
The wretched gift eternity
Was thine-and thou hast borne it well.
All that the Thunderer wrung from thee,
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresee,
But would not to appease him tell;
And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
And in his Soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled
That in his hand the lightnings trembled.
Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen man with his own mind;
But baffled as thou wert from high,
Still in thy patient energy,
In the endurance, and repulse
Of thine impenetrable Spirit,
Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse, A mighty lesson we inherit :
Thou art a symbol and a sign
To mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee, Man is in part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself-an equal to all woes,
And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry
Its own concenter'd recompense, Triumphant where it dares defy, And making Death a Victory.
FATHER of Light! great God of Heaven!
Hear'st thou the accents of despair?
Can guilt like man's be e'er forgiven?
Can vice atone for crimes by prayer?
Father of Light, on thee I call!
Thou see'st my soul is dark within; Thou who canst mark the sparrow's fall, Avert from me the death of sin.
No shrine I seek to sects unknown;
Oh point to me the path of truth!
Thy dread omnipotence I own;
Spare, yet amend, the faults of youth.
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