A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919/Napoleon

by Gamaliel Bradford

NAPOLEON

FOR France and liberty he set apart
His soul at first in aspiration high.
But pure thoughts wither and ideals die.
And self, fed richly from ambition's mart,
Swelled, triumphed with insinuating art,
The hideous, monstrous, all-engrossing I,
Which strangled love and France and liberty
And laid its eager clutch on Europe's heart.

Then Spain assailed it like an autumn gust,
And England netted it with her sea-might,
And Russia opened all her icy graves.
The huge colossus crumbled into dust
And sank forever out of human sight
On a lone island 'mid the Atlantic waves.

Gamaliel Bradford