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| FIT tomb was St. Helena, O Napoleon, for thee! | |
| A barren rock, that far and lone was planted in the sea! | |
| The wild untainted sea-gales there could sigh above thy turf, | |
| And thy requiem was the moaning of the ever-plunging surf; | |
| No busy jar of restless life, no hurrying feet were near, | 5 |
| There came the watchful stars alone, and the revolving year;— | |
| The scourge and dread of Europe, whose cannons’ conquering roar | |
| Pealed down the towering Pyrenees and rang from shore to shore, | |
| Whose restless and impatient heart in life could find no room, | |
| Had the ocean for a mourner, and an island for a tomb. | 10 |
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| Thy lifeless body they exhumed, when thou wast but a name, | |
| When thy tongue was still as silence, and thy ear was deaf to fame; | |
| The exiled corpse, that could not harm, they lifted from the grave, | |
| And in solemn triumph bore it to its home across the wave; | |
| Mid the shriek and wail of trumpets, in long and solemn train, | 15 |
| In thy funeral car they bore thee to thy grave beside the Seine. | |
| And thou whose first return had been in triumph and in pride, | |
| When the glad acclaim of thousands was pealing far and wide, | |
| When the warrior crowned with laurels came a throne to reassume, | |
| Came back at last, a silent corpse, to crumble in a tomb. | 20 |
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| They laid thee, while the trifling world forgot the song and dance, | |
| In a splendid mausoleum in the populous heart of France; | |
| The costly mockery of woe with the pageant passed away, | |
| And thou, dead conqueror, couldst win from pleasure but a day; | |
| Through all the city’s arteries again in toil and strife | 25 |
| Whirled on with eddying current the hurrying tide of life; | |
| The busy hum of Paris was dinning o’er thy head, | |
| And the reckless passer hurried by and thought not of the dead,— | |
| The pomp and pageantry were past, the burial was o’er, | |
| And Napoleon slept as lonely there as on Helena’s shore. | 30 |
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