Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails. Men

Died; and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meager by the meager were devoured.
Even dogs assailed their masters-all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds, and beasts, and famished men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the drooping dead
Lured their lank jaws: himself sought out no food,
But, with a piteous, and perpetual moan,

And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answered not with a caress-he died.

The crowd was famished by degrees. But two
Of an enormous city did survive,

And they were enemies. They met beside

The dying embers of an altar-place,

Where had been heaped a mass of holy things

For an unholy usage. They raked up,

And, shivering, scraped with their cold, skeleton hands, The feeble ashes; and their feeble breath

Blew for a little life, and made a flame,

Which was a mockery. Then they lifted

Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld

Each other's aspects-saw, and shrieked, and died;
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,

Unknowing who he was, upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend.

The world was void:

The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless;
A lump of death, a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes and ocean, all stood still,
And nothing stirred within their silent depths.

Ships, sailorless, lay rotting on the sea,

And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropped
They slept on the abyss, without a surge;

The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave;
The moon, their mistress, had expired before;
The winds were withered in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perished: Darkness had no need
Of aid from them-she was the universe.

Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte

IS done-but yesterday a King!

'TIS

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.

Ill-minded man! why scourge thy kind
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!

Thanks for that lesson-it will teach
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 triumph, and the vanity,
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 Desolator desolate!

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!

He who of old would rend the oak,
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 prowler's prey:
But thou must eat thy heart away !

The Roman, when his burning heart,
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.

The Spaniard, when the lust of sway

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.

But thou-from thy reluctant hand
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!

And earth hath spilt her blood for him,
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!

Thine evil deeds are writ in gore,
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?

Weighed in the balance, hero dust
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.

And she, proud Austria's mournful flower,
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,