"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 &tate, between an Emperor and an Exile, till

GILBON's Decline and Fall, vol. vi. p. 220.

VOL. IV. F

ODE

ΤΟ

NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE.

'T is done

I.

-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.

II.

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 guess Ambition's less than littleness!

All quell'd! - Dark Spirit! what must be
The madness of thy memory!

The Desolator desolate !

V.

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!

VI.

He (2) who of old would rend the oak,
Dream'd not of the rebound;
Chain'd by the trunk he vainly broke
Alone how look'd 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!

VII.

The Roman, (3) 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 abandon'd power.

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

(2) Milo.

(3) Sylla.