| |
| HIS falchion flashed along the Nile, | |
| His host he led through Alpine snows, | |
| O’er Moscow’s towers, that blazed the while, | |
| His eagle-flag unrolled—and froze! | |
| |
| Here sleeps he now, alone!—not one, | 5 |
| Of all the kings whose crowns he gave | |
| Bends o’er his dust; nor wife nor son | |
| Has ever seen or sought his grave. | |
| |
| Behind the sea-girt rock the star | |
| That led him on from crown to crown | 10 |
| Has sunk, and nations from afar | |
| Gazed as it faded and went down. | |
| |
| High is his tomb: the ocean flood, | |
| Far, far below, by storms is curled,— | |
| As round him heaved, while high he stood, | 15 |
| A stormy and unstable world. | |
| |
| Alone he sleeps: the mountain cloud, | |
| That night hangs round him, and the breath | |
| Of morning scatters, is the shroud | |
| That wraps the conqueror’s clay in death. | 20 |
| |
| Pause here! The far-off world at last | |
| Breathes free; the hand that shook its thrones, | |
| And to the earth its mitres cast, | |
| Lies powerless now beneath these stones. | |
| |
| Hark! Comes there from the pyramids, | 25 |
| And from Siberian wastes of snow, | |
| And Europe’s hills, a voice that bids | |
| The world be awed to mourn him?—No! | |
| |
| The only, the perpetual dirge | |
| That ’s heard here, is the sea-bird’s cry,— | 30 |
| The mournful murmur of the surge, | |
| The cloud’s deep voice, the wind’s low sigh. | |
| |
