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 thoughReichstadt the letters cut upon the stoneMay spell, and King of Rome the words may runWhere palace gossip babbles of thy fewUnshadowed days, a louder voice than theirsProclaims thee by the title of thy dreams:The second Cæsar of the French, and likeHis great begetter called Napoleon.
Poor pinch of royal dust, commingled soonIn alien soil with ashes of the thingsOutworn thy father toppled down and burned,Vague sterile child of old and new, vague lordOf naught and nowhere, on a shadowy throne,Near the huge pedestal the CorsicanUpreared with wrecks and fragments of the seatsOf ancient tyrannies, thy figure sits,A shape of mist yet lordlier called than kings— The simulacrum of an emperorWrought with thy features and thy father's name,The ghost of his desire, and on thy browThe wraith of his tremendous diadem.