HOW long he sat—this Cæsar of the stage, | |
| This bold, pretending patron of the age! | |
| Muzzled the press, yet bade the people think; | |
| Knelt to the Pope, but gave the crowd a wink; | |
| Now capped a Cardinal, now endowed a school; | 5 |
| Permitted suffrage, under iron rule; | |
| Gave wings to trade, but clogged all daring thought, | |
| Counting all counsel but his own as naught; | |
| Put new wine in old bottles, best in worst, | |
| And clamped them round with iron, lest they burst; | 10 |
| Forced two extremes to marry, last with first; | |
| Wed light to darkness, and misnamed the brood | |
| Born of the union, France’s highest good. | |
| |
| Professing friendship for our western main, | |
| He hoped to split our continent in twain; | 15 |
| And while our back is turned to grasp our foe, | |
| Drives in an Austrian wedge at Mexico; | |
| Finds he has bungled sadly, and would fain | |
| Withdraw poor Maximilian again. | |
| Would like to recall his forces too from Rome, | 20 |
| But fears the hubbub of his priests at home. | |
| So, pledged to God and Mammon, he prolongs | |
| The strife with chaos, smiles on rights and wrongs; | |
| The Pope’s non possumus most blandly hears, | |
| And leaves poor Rome in misery and tears; | 25 |
| |
| Prates loud of nation’s rights, and ten times o’er | |
| Opens and shuts a people’s prison-door. | |
| |
| Now, time brings round its retributions strange. | |
| O’er Europe’s face there sweeps a mighty change. | |
| Now Germany compact and bristling stands | 30 |
| Guarding her blue Rhine from the invader’s hands. | |
| Now Venice sets her sea-pearl in the ring | |
| Worn by young Italy’s victorious king. | |
| Now Rome, e’en Rome, must add her eternal fame | |
| To a throne upborne by Garabaldi’s name; | 35 |
| Unguarded by her Gallic sentinel, | |
| She loosely holds the keys of heaven and hell; | |
| Her Pope, whose thunders rattled west and east, | |
| Changed by a pen-scrawl to a harmless priest. | |
| |
| And he, the mighty Emperor, whose word | 40 |
| Held Europe spell-bound, in war’s thunders heard | |
| A voice that overruled his subtile tricks, | |
| His blunders and his shuffling politics, | |
| His sham democracy, his hard decrees, | |
| His double-dealings and diplomacies. | 45 |
| These brought their sure results,—ambition checked, | |
| A tarnished splendor, and an empire wrecked, | |
| And that distrust through every heart that crept, | |
| At rights withheld and promises unkept; | |
| While downward sank his star, unmourned of all | 50 |
| Who hailed the nation’s rise, the usurper’s fall; | |
| Till death has swept away the last frail chance | |
| That cheered the friends of tyranny in France. | |
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