NAPOLEON'S EPITAPH.
"The moon of St. Helena shone out, and there we saw the face of Napoleon's sepulchre, characterless, uninscribed."
And who shall write thine epitaph? thou man
Of mystery and might.
Shall orphan hands
Inscribe it with their fathers' broken swords?
Or the warm trickling of the widows' tear,
Channel it slowly 'mid the rugged rock,
As the keen torture of the water-drop
Doth wear the sentenc'd brain?
Shall countless ghosts
Arise from Hades, and in lurid flame
With shadowy finger trace thine effigy,
Who sent them to their audit unanneal'd,
And with but that brief space for shrift or prayer,
Given at the cannon's mouth?
Thou who did'st sit
Like eagle on the apex of the globe,
And hear the murmur of its conquer'd tribes,
As chirp the weak-voic'd nations of the grass,
Why art thou sepulchred in yon far Isle,
Yon little speck, which scarce the mariner
Descries mid ocean's foam? Thou who didst hew
A pathway for thy host above the cloud,
Guiding their footsteps o'er the frost-work crown
Of the thron'd Alps,—why dost thou sleep unmark'd,
Even by such slight memento as the hind
Carves on his own coarse tomb-stone?
