Poems (Van Rensselaer)/Napoleon II
NAPOLEON II
Poor babe of France and captive of her foes,
Exiled, disarmed, and disinherited,
Within the tomb thy star revives; for though
Reichstadt the letters cut upon the stone
May spell, and King of Rome the words may run
Where palace gossip babbles of thy few
Unshadowed days, a louder voice than theirs
Proclaims thee by the title of thy dreams:
The second Cæsar of the French, and like
His great begetter called Napoleon.
Exiled, disarmed, and disinherited,
Within the tomb thy star revives; for though
Reichstadt the letters cut upon the stone
May spell, and King of Rome the words may run
Where palace gossip babbles of thy few
Unshadowed days, a louder voice than theirs
Proclaims thee by the title of thy dreams:
The second Cæsar of the French, and like
His great begetter called Napoleon.
Poor pinch of royal dust, commingled soon
In alien soil with ashes of the things
Outworn thy father toppled down and burned,
Vague sterile child of old and new, vague lord
Of naught and nowhere, on a shadowy throne,
Near the huge pedestal the Corsican
Upreared with wrecks and fragments of the seats
Of ancient tyrannies, thy figure sits,
A shape of mist yet lordlier called than kings—
The simulacrum of an emperor
Wrought with thy features and thy father's name,
The ghost of his desire, and on thy brow
The wraith of his tremendous diadem.
In alien soil with ashes of the things
Outworn thy father toppled down and burned,
Vague sterile child of old and new, vague lord
Of naught and nowhere, on a shadowy throne,
Near the huge pedestal the Corsican
Upreared with wrecks and fragments of the seats
Of ancient tyrannies, thy figure sits,
A shape of mist yet lordlier called than kings—
The simulacrum of an emperor
Wrought with thy features and thy father's name,
The ghost of his desire, and on thy brow
The wraith of his tremendous diadem.