The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (ed. Hutchinson, 1914)/Feelings of a Republican on the Fall of Bonaparte

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

FEELINGS OF A REPUBLICAN ON THE FALL OF BONAPARTE

[Published with Alastor, 1816.]

I hated thee, fallen tyrant! I did groanTo think that a most unambitious slave,Like thou, shouldst dance and revel on the graveOf Liberty. Thou mightst have built thy throneWhere it had stood even now: thou didst prefer 5A frail and bloody pomp which Time has sweptIn fragments towards Oblivion. Massacre, For this I prayed, would on thy sleep have crept,Treason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear, and Lust,And stifled thee, their minister. I know 10Too late, since thou and France are in the dust,That Virtue owns a more eternal foeThan Force or Fraud: old Custom, legal Crime,And bloody Faith the foulest birth of Time.