With tyrant dead your fathers traced
A circle wide, with battles graced;
Victorious garland, red and vast!
Which blooming out from home did go
To Cadiz, Cairo, Rome, Moscow,
From Jemappes to Montmirail passed!
Of warlike Lyceums[1] ye are
The favored sons; there, deeds of war
Formed e’en your plays, while o’er you
shook
The battle-flags in air aloft!
Passing your lines, Napoleon oft
Electrified you with a look!
Eagle of France! whose vivid wing
Did in a hundred places fling
A bloody feather, till one night
The arrow whelmed thee ’neath the
wave!
Look up—rejoice—for
now thy brave
And worthy eaglets dare the light.
ELIZABETH COLLINS.
[Footnote 1: The pupils of the Polytechnic Military
School distinguished themselves by their patriotic
zeal and military skill, through all the troubles.]
("Laissez-moi pleurer sur cette race.")
[I. v.]
Oh! let me weep that race whose day is
past,
By exile given, by exile claimed
once more,
Thrice swept away upon that fatal blast.
Whate’er its blame,
escort we to our shore
These relics of the monarchy
of yore;
And to th’ outmarching oriflamme be paid
War’s honors by the flag on Fleurus’ field
displayed!
Fraser’s Magazine
("Tu domines notre age; ange ou demon, qu’importe!")
[I. vii.]
Angel or demon! thou,—whether
of light
The minister, or darkness—still
dost sway
This age of ours; thine eagle’s
soaring flight
Bears us, all breathless, after it away.
The eye that from thy presence fain would
stray,
Shuns thee in vain; thy mighty shadow
thrown
Rests on all pictures of the living day,
And on the threshold of our time alone,
Dazzling, yet sombre, stands thy form, Napoleon!
Thus, when the admiring stranger’s
steps explore
The subject-lands that ’neath Vesuvius
be,
Whether he wind along the enchanting shore
To Portici from fair Parthenope,
Or, lingering long in dreamy reverie,
O’er loveliest Ischia’s od’rous
isle he stray,
Wooed by whose breath the soft and am’rous
sea
Seems like some languishing sultana’s
lay,
A voice for very sweets that scarce can win its way.
Him, whether Paestum’s solemn fane
detain,
Shrouding his soul with meditation’s
power;
Or at Pozzuoli, to the sprightly strain
Of tarantella danced ’neath Tuscan
tower,
Listening, he while away the evening hour;
Or wake the echoes, mournful, lone and
deep,
Of that sad city, in its dreaming bower
By the volcano seized, where mansions
keep
The likeness which they wore at that last fatal sleep;
