C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
From ‘Ode to Napoleon’
By Lord Byron (1788–1824)
’T
And armed with Kings to strive;
And now thou art a nameless thing,
So abject—yet alive!
Is this the man of thousand thrones,
Who strewed our earth with hostile bones,
And can he thus survive?
Since he, miscalled the Morning Star,
Nor man nor fiend hath fallen so far.
Who bowed so low the knee?
By gazing on thyself grown blind,
Thou taught’st the rest to see.
With might unquestioned—power to save—
Thine only gift hath been the grave
To those that worshipped thee;
Nor till thy fall could mortals guess
Ambition’s less than littleness!
To after-warriors more
Than high Philosophy can preach,
And vainly preached before.
That spell upon the minds of men
Breaks never to unite again,
That led them to adore
Those pagod things of sabre sway,
With fronts of brass and feet of clay.
The rapture of the strife—
The earthquake voice of Victory,
To thee the breath of life—
The sword, the sceptre, and that sway
Which man seemed made but to obey,
Wherewith renown was rife—
All quelled!—Dark Spirit! what must be
The madness of thy memory!
The victor overthrown!
The Arbiter of others’ fate
A Suppliant for his own!
Is it some yet imperial hope
That with such change can calmly cope,
Or dread of death alone?
To die a prince, or live a slave—
Thy choice is most ignobly brave!
Dreamed not of the rebound;
Chained by the trunk he vainly broke—
Alone—how looked he round!
Thou, in the sternness of thy strength,
An equal deed hast done at length,
And darker fate hast found:
He fell, the forest prowlers’ prey;
But thou must eat thy heart away!
Was slaked with blood of Rome,
Threw down the dagger—dared depart
In savage grandeur, home:
He dared depart, in utter scorn
Of men that such a yoke had borne,
Yet left him such a doom!
His only glory was that hour
Of self-upheld abandoned power.
Had lost its quickening spell,
Cast crowns for rosaries away,
An empire for a cell;
A strict accountant of his beads,
A subtle disputant on creeds,
His dotage trifled well:
Yet better had he neither known
A bigot’s shrine, nor despot’s throne.
The thunderbolt is wrung;
Too late thou leav’st the high command
To which thy weakness clung;
All Evil Spirit as thou art,
It is enough to grieve the heart
To see thine own unstrung;
To think that God’s fair world hath been
The footstool of a thing so mean!
Who thus can hoard his own!
And Monarchs bowed the trembling limb,
And thanked him for a throne!
Fair Freedom! we may hold thee dear,
When thus thy mightiest foes their fear
In humblest guise have shown.
Oh! ne’er may tyrant leave behind
A brighter name to lure mankind!
Nor written thus in vain—
Thy triumphs tell of fame no more,
Or deepen every stain:
If thou hadst died, as honor dies,
Some new Napoleon might arise,
To shame the world again;
But who would soar the solar height,
To set in such a starless night?
Is vile as vulgar clay;
Thy scales, Mortality! are just
To all that pass away;
But yet methought the living great
Some higher sparks should animate,
To dazzle and dismay:
Nor deemed Contempt could thus make mirth
Of these, the Conquerors of the earth.
Thy still imperial bride,
How bears her breast the torturing hour?
Still clings she to thy side?
Must she too bend, must she too share
Thy late repentance, long despair,
Thou throneless Homicide?
If still she loves thee, hoard that gem—
’Tis worth thy vanished diadem!
And gaze upon the sea;
That element may meet thy smile—
It ne’er was ruled by thee!
Or trace with thine all idle hand,
In loitering mood upon the sand,
That Earth is now as free!
That Corinth’s pedagogue hath now
Transferred his byword to thy brow.
What thoughts will there be thine,
While brooding in thy prisoned rage?
But one—“The world was mine!”
Unless, like him of Babylon,
All sense is with thy sceptre gone,
Life will not long confine
That spirit poured so widely forth—
So long obeyed—so little worth!