And soon the Caesar, with an eye a-flame
Whole nations’ contact urging
To gain his soldiers gold and fame
Oh, Sun on high emerging,
Whose dazzling lustre fired the hells
Embosomed in grim bronze, which, free,
arose
To change five hundred thousand base-born Tells,
Into his host of half-a-million heroes!
What! next a captive? Yea, and caged apart.
No weight of arms enfolded
Can crush the turmoil in that seething heart
Which Nature—not her journeymen—self-moulded.
Let sordid jailers vex their prize;
But only bends that brow to lightning,
As gazing from the seaward rock, his sighs
Cleave through the storm and haste where
France looms bright’ning.
Alone, but greater! Broke the sceptre, true!
Yet lingers still some power—
In tears of woe man’s metal may renew
The temper of high hour;
For, bating breath, e’er list the kings
The pinions clipped may grow! the Eagle
May burst, in frantic thirst for home, the rings
And rend the Bulldog, Fox, and Bear, and
Beagle!
And, lastly, grandest! ’tween dark sea and here
Eternal brightness coming!
The eye so weary’s freshened with a tear
As rises distant drumming,
And wailing cheer—they pass the pale
His army mourns though still’s the
end hid;
And from his war-stained cloak, he answers “Hail!”
And spurns the bed of gloom for throne
aye-splendid!
H.L. WILLIAMS.
THE PATIENCE OF THE PEOPLE.
("Il s’est dit tant de fois.")
[III., May, 1830.]
How often have the people said: “What’s
power?”
Who reigns soon is dethroned? each fleeting hour
Has onward borne, as in a fevered dream,
Such quick reverses, like a judge supreme—
Austere but just, they contemplate the end
To which the current of events must tend.
Self-confidence has taught them to forbear,
And in the vastness of their strength, they spare.
Armed with impunity, for one in vain
Resists a nation, they let others reign.
G.W.M. REYNOLDS.
("Souvent quand mon esprit riche.")
[VII., May 18, 1828.]
When my mind, on the ocean of poesy hurled,
Floats on in repose round this wonderful world,
Oft the sacred fire from heaven—
Mysterious sun, that gives light to the soul—
Strikes mine with its ray, and above the pole
Its upward course is driven,
Like a wandering cloud, then, my eager thought
Capriciously flies, to no guidance brought,
With every quarter’s
wind;
It regards from those radiant vaults on high,
Earth’s cities below, and again doth fly,
And leaves but its shadow
behind.
