The Emperor Nepos was acknowledged by the Senate, by the Italians, and by the provincials of Gaul; his moral virtues and military talents, were loudly celebrated; and those who derived any private benefit from his government, announced in prophetic strains the restoration of public felicity.

By this shameful abdication, he protracted his life a few years, in a very ambiguous state, between an emperor and an exile, till--

GIBBON'S Decline and Fall, vol. vi. p. 220

ODE

ΤΟ

NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE.

'T is done-but yesterday a king!
And arm'd with kings to strive-
And now thou art a nameless thing
So abject-yet alive!

Is this the man of thousand thrones,
Who strew'd our earth with hostile bones?
And can he thus survive?

Since he, miscall'd the morning star,
Nor man nor fiend hath fallen so far.

Ill-minded man! why scourge thy kind,
Who bow'd so low the knee?
By gazing on thyself grown blind,
Thou taught'st the rest to see.

With might unquestion'd,-power to save—
Thine only gift hath been the grave
To those that worshipp'd thee;

Nor, till thy fall, could mortals
Ambition's less than littleness!

guess

4621

Thanks for that lesson-it will teach

To after-warriors more

Than high philosophy can preach,
And vainly preach'd 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 shout of Victory,
To thee the breath of life;
The sword, the sceptre, and that sway
Which man seem'd made but to obey,
Wherewith renown was rife-
All quell'd!-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

1 Certaminis gaudia, the expression of Attila, in his harangue to his army, previous to the battle of Chalons, given in Cassiodorus.