He wants not this; but France shall feel the want
Of this last consolation, though so scant;
Her honour, fame, and faith demand his bones,
To rear amid a pyramid of thrones ;
Or carried onward, in the battle's van,

To form, like Guesclin's* dust, her talisman.
But be it as it is, the time may come

His name shall beat the alarm like Ziska's drum.

V.

Oh, Heaven! of which he was in power a feature;
Oh, earth, of which he was a noble creature ;
Thou isle! to be remember'd long and well,
That saw'st the unfledged eaglet chip his shell!
Ye Alps, which view'd him in his dawning flights
Hover the victor of an hundred fights!

Thou Rome, who saw'st thy Cæsar's deeds outdone!
Alas! why pass'd he too the Rubicon ?
The Rubicon of man's awaken'd rights,
To herd with vulgar kings and parasites ?
Egypt! from whose all dateless tombs arose
Forgotten Pharaohs from their long repose,
And shook within her pyramids to hear
A new Cambyses thundering in their ear;
While the dark shades of forty ages stood
Like started giants by Nile's famous flood;
Or from the pyramid's tall pinnacle
Beheld the desert peopled, as from hell,
With clashing hosts, who strew'd the barren sand
To re-manure the uncultivated land!

Spain! which, a moment mindless of the Cid,
Beheld his banner flouting thy Madrid!
Austria! which saw thy twice-ta'en capital
Twice spared, to be the traitress of his fall!
Ye race of Frederic !-Frederic but in name
And falsehood—heirs to all except his fame ;
Who, crush'd at Jena, crouch'd at Berlin, fell,
First, and but rose to follow: ye who dwell
Where Kosciusko dwelt, remembering yet
The unpaid amount of Catherine's bloody debt!
Poland! o'er which the avenging angel 'pass'd,
But left thee as he found thee, still a waste :
Forgetting all thy still enduring claim,
Thy lotted people and extinguish'd name ;

* Guesclin died during the siege of a city; it surrendered, and the keys were brought and laid upon his bier, so that the place might appear rendered to his ashes.

Thy sigh for freedom, thy long-flowing tear,
That sound that crashes in the tyrant's ear:
Kosciusko! on-on-on-the thirst of war
Gasps for the gore of serfs and of their czar ;
The half-barbaric Moscow's minarets
Gleam in the sun, but 't is a sun that sets!
Moscow thou limit of his long career,

For which rude Charles had wept his frozen tear
To see in vain he saw thee-how ! with spire
And palace fuel to one common fire.

To this the soldier lent his kindling match,

To this the peasant gave his cottage thatch,
To this the merchant flung his hoarded store,
The prince his hall-and Moscow was no more!
Sublimest of volcanos! Etna's flame

Pales before thine, and quenchless Hecla 's tame;
Vesuvius shows his blaze, an usual sight
For gaping tourists, from his hackney'd height:
Thou stand'st alone unrivall'd, till the fire
To come, in which all empires shall expire.
Thou other element! as strong and stern
To teach a lesson conquerors will not learn,
Whose icy wing flapp'd o'er the faltering foe,
Till fell a hero with each flake of snow;
How did thy numbing beak and silent fang
Pierce, till hosts perish'd with a single pang!
In vain shall Seine look up along his banks
For the gay thousands of his dashing ranks ;

In vain shall France recall beneath her vines

Her youth their blood flows faster than her wines,

Or stagnant in their human ice remains

In frozen mummies on the polar plains.

In vain will Italy's broad sun awaken

Her offspring chill'd, its beams are now forsaken.
Of all the trophies gather'd from the war,
What shall return? The conqueror's broken car !
The conqueror's yet unbroken heart! Again
The horn of Roland sounds, and not in vain.
Lutzen, where fell the Swede of victory,
Beholds him conquer, but, alas! not die :
Dresden surveys three despots fly once more
Before their sovereign-sovereign, as before;
But there exhausted Fortune quits their field,
And Leipsic's treason bids the unvanquish'd yield;
The Saxon jackal leaves the lion's side

To turn the bear's, and wolf's, and fox's guide;
And backward to the den of his despair

The forest monarch shrinks, but finds no lair!

Oh ye! and each, and all! oh, France! who found
Thy long fair fields plongh'd up as hostile ground,
Disputed foot by foot, till treason, still

His only victor, from Montmartre's hill

Look'd down o'er trampled Paris; and thou, isle,
Which seest Etruria from thy ramparts smile,
The momentary shelter of his pride,

Till, woo'd by danger, his yet weeping bride;
Oh, France! retaken by a single march,

Whose path was through one long triumphal arch !
Oh, bloody and most bootless Waterloo,

Which proves how fools may have their fortune too,
Won, half by blunder, half by treachery;
Oh, dull Saint Helen! with thy jailor nigh—
Hear! hear! Prometheus from his rock appeal
To earth, air, ocean, all that felt or feel
His power and glory, all who yet shall hear
A name eternal as the rolling year;
He teaches them the lesson taught so long,
So oft, so vainly-learn to do no wrong!
A single step into the right had made
This man the Washington of worlds betray'd;
A single step into the wrong has given
His name a doubt to all the winds of heaven;
The reed of fortune and of thrones the rod,
Of fame the Moloch or the demi-god ;
His country's Cæsar, Europe's Hannibal,
Without their decent dignity of fall.
Yet vanity herself had better taught
A surer path even to the fame he sought,
By pointing out on history's fruitless page,
Ten thousand conquerors for a single sage.
While Franklin's quiet memory climbs to heaven,
Calming the lightning which he thence hath riven,
Or drawing from the no less kindled earth
Freedom and peace to that which boasts his birth:
While Washington's a watch-word, such as ne'er
Shall sink while there 's an echo left to air:
While even the Spaniard's thirst of gold and war
Forgets Pizarro to shout Bolivar !

Alas! why must the same Atlantic wave
Which wafted freedom gird a tyrant's grave,—
The king of kings, and yet of slaves the slave,
Who burst the chains of millions to renew,
fetters which his arm broke through,

The

very

* I refer the reader to the first address of Prometheus in Eschylus, when he is left alone by his attendants, and before the arrival of the Chorus of Sea-nymphs.

And crush'd the rights of Europe and his own,
To flit between a dungeon and a throne?

VI.

But 't will not be the spark 's awaken'd-lo!
The swarthy Spaniard feels his former glow;
The same high spirit which beat back the Moor
Through eight long ages of alternate gore,
Revives—and where? in that avenging clime
Where Spain was once synonymous with crime,
Where Cortes' and Pizarro's banner flew,
The infant world redeems her name of "New.”
'Tis the old aspiration breathed afresh,
To kindle souls within degraded flesh,

Such as repulsed the Persian from the shore

Where Greece was-
-No! she still is Greece once more.
One common cause makes myriads of one breast,
Slaves of the east, or Helots of the west;
On Andes' and on Athos' peaks unfurl'd,

The self-same standard streams o'er either world :
The Athenian wears again Harmodius' sword;
The Chili chief abjures his foreign lord;
The Spartan knows himself once more a Greek;
Young freedom plumes the crest of each cacique;
Debating despots, hemm'd on either shore,
Shrink vainly from the roused Atlantic's roar ;
Through Calpe's strait the rolling tides advance,
Sweep lightly by the half-tamed land of France,
Dash o'er the old Spaniard's cradle, and would fain
Unite Ausonia to the mighty main :

But driven fron thence awhile, yet not for aye,
Break o'er th' Ægean, mindful of the day

Of Salamis-there, there the waves arise,

Not to be lull'd by tyrant victories.

Lone, lost, abandon'd in their utmost need

By christians unto whom they gave their creed,
The desolated lands, the ravaged isle,

The foster'd feud encouraged to beguile,

The aid evaded, and the cold delay,

Prolong'd but in the hope to make a prey ;—

These, these shall tell the tale, and Greece can show

The false friend worse than the infuriate foe.

But this is well: Greeks only should free Greece,
Not the barbarian, with his mask of peace.

How should the autocrat of bondage be
The king of serfs, and set the nations free?
Better still serve the haughty Mussulman,
Than swell the Cossaque's prowling caravan ;

Better still toil for masters, than await,

The slaves of slaves, before a Russian gate,-
Number'd by hordes, a human capital,
A live estate, existing but for thrall,
Lotted by thousands as a meet reward
For the first courtier in the czar's regard;
While their immediate owner never tastes
His sleep, sans dreaming of Siberia's wastes ;
Better succumb even to their own despair,
And drive the camel than purvey the bear.

VII.

But not alone within the hoariest clime,
Where freedom dates her birth with that of time;
And not alone where, plunged in night, a crowd
Of Incas darken to a dubious cloud,

The dawn revives; renown'd, romantic Spain
Holds back the invader from her soil again.
Not now the Roman tribe, nor Punic horde,
Demand her fields as lists to prove the sword,
Not now the Vandal or the Visigoth
Pollute the plains, alike abhorring both;
Nor old Pelayo on his mountain rears
The warlike fathers of a thousand years.
That seed is sown and reap'd, as oft the Moor
Sighs to remember on his dusky shore.
Long in the peasant's song or poet's page
Has dwelt the memory of Abencerage,

The Zegri, and the captive victors, flung

Back to the barbarous realm from whence they sprung.
But these are gone—their faith, their swords, their sway,
Yet left more anti-christian foes than they :

The bigot monarch and the butcher priest,
The inquisition, with her burning feast,

The faith's red "auto," fed with human fuel,
While sat the catholic Moloch, calmly cruel,
Enjoying, with inexorable eye,

That fiery festival of agony!

The stern or feeble sovereign, one or both
By turns; the haughtiness whose pride was sloth;
The long-degenerate noble; the debased
Hidalgo, and the peasant less disgraced,
But more degraded; the unpeopled realm;
The once proud navy which forgot the helm;
The once impervious phalanx disarray'd;
The idle forge that form'd Toledo's blade;
The foreign wealth that flow'd on every shore,
Save hers who earn'd it with the natives' gore;