| |
(Dec. 15, 1840)
COLD and brilliant streams the sunlight on the wintry banks of Seine; | |
| Gloriously the imperial city rears her pride of tower and fane; | |
| Solemnly with deep voice pealeth Nôtre Dame, thine ancient chime; | |
| Minute-guns the death-bell answer in the same deep, measured time. | |
| |
| On the unwonted stillness gather sounds of an advancing host, | 5 |
| As the rising tempest chafeth on St. Helen’s far-off coast; | |
| Nearer rolls a mighty pageant, clearer swells the funeral strain; | |
| From the barrier arch of Neuilly pours the giant burial train. | |
| |
| Dark with eagles is the sunlight, darkly on the golden air | |
| Flap the folds of faded standards, eloquently mourning there; | 10 |
| O’er the pomp of glittering thousands, like a battle-phantom flits | |
| Tatter’d flag of Jena, Friedland, Arcola, and Austerlitz. | |
| |
| Eagle-crown’d and garland-circled, slowly moves the stately car | |
| ’Mid a sea of plumes and horsemen, all the burial pomp of war. | |
| Riderless, a war-worn charger follows his dead master’s bier; | 15 |
| Long since battle-trumpet roused him, he but lived to follow here. | |
| |
| From his grave ’mid Ocean’s dirges, moaning surge and sparkling foam, | |
| Lo, the Imperial Dead returneth! lo, the Hero dust comes home! | |
| He hath left the Atlantic island, lonely vale and willow-tree, | |
| ’Neath the Invalides to slumber, ’mid the Gallic chivalry. | 20 |
| |
| Glorious tomb o’er glorious sleepers! gallant fellowship to share— | |
| Paladin and peer and marshal—France, thy noblest dust is there! | |
| Names that light thy battle annals, names that shook the heart of earth! | |
| Stars in crimson War’s horizon—synonyms for martial worth! | |
| |
| Room within that shrine of heroes! place, pale spectres of the past! | 25 |
| Homage yield, ye battle-phantoms. Lo, your mightiest comes at last! | |
| Was his course the Woe out-thunder’d from prophetic trumpet’s lips? | |
| Was his type the ghostly horseman shadow’d in the Apocalypse? | |
| |
| Grey-hair’d soldiers gather round him, relics of an age of war, | |
| Followers of the Victor-Eagle, when his flight was wild and far. | 30 |
| Men who panted in the death-strife on Rodrigo’s bloody ridge, | |
| Hearts that sicken’d at the death-shriek from the Russian’s shatter’d bridge; | |
| |
| Men who heard the immortal war-cry of the wild Egyptian fight— | |
| ‘Forty centuries o’erlook us from yon Pyramid’s grey height!’ | |
| They who heard the moans of Jaffa, and the breach of Acre knew, | 35 |
| They who rushed their foaming war-steeds on the squares of Waterloo; | |
| |
| They who loved him, they who fear’d him, they who in his dark hour fled, | |
| Round the mighty burial gather, spellbound by the awful Dead! | |
| Churchmen, princes, statesmen, warriors, all a kingdom’s chief array, | |
| And the Fox stands, crownèd mourner, by the Eagle’s hero clay! | 40 |
| |
| But the last high rite is paid him, and the last deep knell is rung, | |
| And the cannons’ iron voices have their thunder-requiem sung; | |
| And, ’mid banners idly drooping, silent gloom and mouldering state, | |
| Shall the trampler of the world upon the Judgement-trumpet wait. | |
| |
| Yet his ancient foes had given him nobler monumental pile, | 45 |
| Where the everlasting dirges moan’d around the burial isle; | |
| Pyramid upheaved by Ocean in his loneliest wilds afar, | |
| For the War-King thunder-stricken from his fiery battle-car! | |
| |
