THE "good old times"-all times when old are good

Are gone; the present might be if they would;
Great things have been, and are, and greater still
Want little of mere mortals but their will:
A wider space, a greener field, is given [heaven."
To those who play their "tricks before high
I know not if the angels weep, but men
Have wept enough-for what?-to weep again!

II.

All is exploded-be it good or bad.
Reader! remember when thou wert a lad,
Then Pitt was all; or, if not all, so much,
His very rival almost deem'd him such.
We, we have seen the intellectual race
Of giants stand, like Titans, face to face-
Athos and Ida, with a dashing sea

Of eloquence between, which flow'd all free,
As the deep billows of the Egean roar
Betwixt the Hellenic and the Phrygian shore.
But where are they-the rivals! a few feet
Of sullen earth divide each winding sheet.
How peaceful and how powerful is the grave,
Which hushes all! a calm, unstormy wave,
Which oversweeps the world. The theme is old
Of "dust to dust;" but half its tale untold:
Time tempers not its terrors-still the worm
Winds its cold folds, the tomb preserves its form,
Varied above, but still alike below;
The urn may shine, the ashes will not glow,
Though Cleopatra's mummy cross the sea
O'er which from empire she lured Anthony;
Though Alexander's urn a show be grown
On shores he wept to conquer, though unknown-
How vain, how worse than vain, at length appear
The madman's wish, the Macedonian's tear!
He wept for worlds to conquer-half the earth
Knows not his name, or but his death, and birth,
And desolation; while his native Greece
Hath all of desolation, save its peace.

He "wept for worlds to conquer!" he who ne'er Conceived the globe, he panted not to spare! With even the busy Northern Isle unknown, Which holds his urn, and never knew his throne.

III.

But where is he, the modern, mightier far,
Who, born no king, made monarchs draw his car;
The new Sesostris, whose unharness'd kings,
Freed from the bit, believe themselves with wings,
And spurn the dust o'er which they crawl'd of late,
Chain'd to the chariot of the chieftain's state?
Yes! where is he, the champion and the child
Of all that's great or little, wise or wild; [thrones;
Whose game was empires, and whose stakes were
Whose table earth-whose dice were human bones?
Behold the grand result in yon lone isle,
And, as thy nature urges, weep or smile.
Sigh to behold the eagle's lofty rage
Reduced to nibble at his narrow cage;
Smile to survey the queller of the nations
Now daily squabbling o'er disputed rations;
Weep to perceive him mourning, as he dines,
O'er curtail'd dishes and o'er stinted wines;
O'er petty quarrels upon petty things.
Is this the man who scourged or feasted kings?
Behold the scales in which his fortune hangs,
A surgeon's statement, and an earl's harangues!
A bust delayed, a book refused, can shake
The sleep of him who kept the world awake.
Is this indeed the tamer of the great,
Now slave of all could tease or irritate-
The paltry gaoler and the prying spy,
The staring stranger with his note-book nigh?
Plunged in a dungeon he had still been great;
How low, how little was this middle state,
Between a prison and a palace, where
How few could feel for what he had to bear!
Vain his complaint, my lord presents his bill,
His food and wine were doled out duly still;
Vain was his sickness, never was a clime
So free from homicide-to doubt 's a crime;

And the stiff surgeon, who maintain'd his cause, Hath lost his place, and gain'd the world's applause. But smile-though all the pangs of brain and heart Disdain, defy, the tardy aid of art;

The Rubicon of man's awaken'd rights,
To herd with vulgar kings and parasites?
Egypt! from whose all dateless tombs arose
Forgotten Pharaohs from their long repose,

IV.

How, if that soaring spirit still retain
A conscious twilight of his blazing reign,
How must he smile, on looking down, to see
The little that he was and sought to be!
What though his name a wider empire found
Than his ambition, though with scarce a bound;
Though first in glory, deepest in reverse,
He tasted empire's blessings and its curse;
Though kings, rejoicing in their late escape
From chains, would gladly be their tyrant's ape;
How must he smile, and turn to yon lone grave,
The proudest sea-mark that o'ertops the wave!
What though his gaoler, duteous to the last,
Scarce deem'd the coffin's lead could keep him fast,
Refusing one poor line along the lid,

To date the birth and death of all it hid;
That name shall hallow the ignoble shore,
A talisman to all save him who bore:
The fleets that sweep before the castern blast
Shall hear their sea-boys hail it from the mast;
When Victory's Gallic column shall but rise,
Like Pompey's pillar, in a desert's skies,
The rocky isle that holds or held his dust,
Shall crown the Atlantic like the hero's bust,
And mighty nature o'er his obsequies
Do more than niggard envy still denies.
But what are these to him? Can glory's lust
Touch the freed spirit or the fetter'd dust?
Small care hath he of what his tomb consists;
Nought if he sleeps-nor more if he exists:
Alike the better-seeing shade will smile
On the rude cavern of the rocky isle,

As if his ashes found their latest home

In Rome's Pantheon or Gaul's mimic dome.
He wants not this; but France shall feel the want
Of this last consolation, though so scant:
Her honour, fame, and faith demand his bones,
To rear above a pyramid of thrones;
Or carried onward in the battle's van,
To form, like Guesclin's dust, her talisman.
But be it as it is the time may come

His name shall beat the alarm, like Ziska's drum.

V.

Oh heaven! of which he was in power a feature;
Oh earth! of which he was a noble creature;
Thou isle! to be remember'd long and well,
That saw'st the unfledged eaglet chip his shell!
Ye Alps, which view'd him in his dawning flights
Hover, the victor of a hundred fights!

Thou Rome, who saw'st thy Cæsar's deeds outdone!
Alas! why pass'd he too the Rubicon-

A new Cambyses thundering in their ear;
While the dark shades of forty ages stood
Like startled giants by Nile's famous flood;
Or from the pyramid's tall pinnacle
Beheld the desert peopled, as from hell,
With clashing hosts, who strew'd the barren sand,
To re-manure the uncultivated land!
Spain which, a moment mindless of the Cid,
Beheld his banner flouting thy Madrid!
Austria! which saw thy twice-ta'en capital
Twice spared to be the traitress of his fall!
Ye race of Frederic!-Frederics but in name
And falsehood-heirs to all except his fame:
Who, crush'd at Jena, crouch'd at Berlin, fell
First, and but rose to follow! Ye who dwell
Where Kosciusko dwelt, remembering yet
The unpaid amount of Catherine's bloody debt!
Poland! o'er which the avenging angel pass'd,
But left thee as he found thee, still a waste,
Forgetting all thy still enduring claim,
Thy lotted people and extinguish'd name,
Thy sigh for freedom, thy long-flowing tear,
That sound that crashes in the tyrant's ear-
Kosciusko! On-on-on-the thirst of war
Gasps for the gore of serfs and of their czar.
The half barbaric Moscow's minarets
Gleam in the sun, but 't is a sun that sets!
Moscow thou limit of his long career,

For which rude Charles had wept his frozen tear
To see in vain-he saw thee-how? with spire
And palace fuel to one common fire.

To this the soldier lent his kindling match,
To this the peasant gave his cottage thatch,
To this the merchant flung his hoarded store,
The prince his hall-and Moscow was no more!
Sublimest of volcanos! Etna's flame

Pales before thine, and quenchless Hecla 's tame;
Vesuvius shows his blaze, an usual sight
For gaping tourists, from his hackney'd height:
Thou stand'st alone unrivall'd, till the fire
To come, in which all empires shall expire!
Thou other element! as strong and stern,
To teach a lesson conquerors will not learn!—
Whose icy wing flapp'd o'er the faltering foe,
Till fell a hero with each flake of snow;
How did thy numbing beak and silent fang
Pierce, till hosts perish'd with a single pang!
In vain shall Seine look up along his banks
For the gay thousands of his dashing ranks!
In vain shall France recall beneath her vines
Her youth-their blood flows faster than her wines;
Or stagnant in their human ice remains
In frozen mummies on the Polar plains.
In vain will Italy's broad sun awaken
Her offspring chill'd; its beams are now forsaken.
Of all the trophies gather'd from the war,
What shall return? the conqueror's broken car!
The conqueror's yet unbroken heart! Again
The horn of Roland sounds, and not in vain.

Lutzen, where fell the Swede of victory,
Beholds him conquer, but, alas! not die :
Dresden surveys three despots fly once more
Before their sovereign,-sovereign as before;
But there exhausted Fortune quits the field,
And Leipsic's treason bids the unvanquish'd yield.
The Saxon jackal leaves the lion's side

To turn the bear's, and wolf's, and fox's guide;
And backward to the den of his despair
The forest monarch shrinks, but finds no lair!

Oh ye! and each, and all! Oh France! who found
Thy long fair fields plough'd up as hostile ground,
Disputed foot by foot, till treason, still
His only victor, from Montmartre's hill
Look'd down o'er trampled Paris! and thou Isle,
Which seest Etruria from thy ramparts smile,
Thou momentary shelter of his pride,
Till woo'd by danger, his yet weeping bride!
Oh, France retaken by a single march,
Whose path was through one long triumphal arch!
Oh, bloody and most bootless Waterloo!
Which proves how fools may have their fortune too,
Won half by blunder, half by treachery:
Oh, dull Saint Helen! with thy gaoler nigh-
Hear! hear Prometheus from his rock appeal
To earth, air, ocean, all that felt or feel

His power and glory, all who yet shall hear
A name eternal as the rolling year;
He teaches them the lesson taught so long,
So oft, so vainly-learn to do no wrong!
A single step into the right had made
This man the Washington of worlds betray'd:
A single step into the wrong has given
His name a doubt to all the winds of heaven;
The reed of Fortune, and of thrones the rod,
Of Fame the Moloch or the demigod;
His country's Cæsar, Europe's Hannibal,
Without their decent dignity of fall.
Yet Vanity herself had better taught
A surer path even to the fame he sought,
By pointing out on history's fruitless page
Ten thousand conquerors for a single sage.
While Franklin's quiet memory climbs to heaven,
Calming the lightning which he thence hath riven,
Or drawing from the no less kindled earth
Freedom and peace to that which boasts his birth;
While Washington's a watchword, such as ne'er
Shall sink while there's an echo left to air:
While even the Spaniard's thirst of gold and war
Forgets Pizarro to shout Bolivar!
Alas! why must the same Atlantic wave
Which wafted freedom gird a tyrant's grave-
The king of kings, and yet of slaves the slave,
Who burst the chains of millions to renew
The very fetters which his arm broke through,
And crush'd the rights of Europe and his own,
To fit between a dungeon and a throne?

VI.

But 't will not be-the spark 's awaken'd-lo! The swarthy Spaniard feels his former glow; The same high spirit which beat back the Moor Through eight long ages of alternate gore

Revives-and where? in that avenging clime
Where Spain was once synonymous with crime,
Where Cortes and Pizarro's banner flew,
The infant world redeems her name of " New."
'Tis the old aspiration breathed afresh,
To kindle souls within degraded flesh,

Such as repulsed the Persian from the shore [more.
Where Greece was-No! she still is Greece once
One common cause makes myriads of one breast,
Slaves of the East, or helots of the West:
On Andes' and on Athos' peaks unfurl'd,
The self-same standard streams o'er either world:

The Athenian wears again Harmodius' sword;
The Chili chief abjures his foreign lord;
The Spartan knows himself once more a Greek,
Young Freedom plumes the crest of each cacique;
Debating despots, hemm'd on either shore,
Shrink vainly from the roused Atlantic's roar;
Through Calpe's strait the rolling tides advance,
Sweep slightly by the half-tamed land of France,
Dash o'er the old Spaniard's cradle, and would fain
Unite Ausonia to the mighty main:

But driven from thence awhile, yet not for aye,
Break o'er th' Ægean, mindful of the day
Of Salamis !-there, there the waves arise,
Not to be lull'd by tyrant victories.

Lone, lost, abandon'd in their utmost need-
By Christians, unto whom they gave their creed,
The desolated lands, the ravaged isle,
The foster'd feud encouraged to beguile,
The aid evaded, and the cold delay,
Prolong'd but in the hope to make a prey ;-
These, these shall tell the tale, and Greece can show
The false friend worse than the infuriate foe.
But this is well: Greeks only should free Greece,
Not the barbarian, with his mask of peace.
How should the autocrat of bondage be
The king of serfs, and set the nations free?
Better still serve the haughty Mussulman,
Than swell the Cossaque's prowling caravan;
Better still toil for masters, than await,
The slave of slaves, before a Russian gate,-
Number'd by hordes, a human capital,
A live estate, existing but for thrall,
Lotted by thousands, as a meet reward
For the first courtier in the Czar's regard;
While their immediate owner never tastes
His sleep, sans dreaming of Siberia's wastes:
Better succumb even to their own despair,
And drive the camel than purvey the bear.

VII.

But not alone within the hoariest clime
Where Freedom dates her birth with that of Time,
And not alone where, plunged in night, a crowd
Of Incas darken to a dubious cloud,
The dawn revives: renown'd, romantic Spain
Holds back the invader from her soil again.
Not now the Roman tribe nor Punic horde
Demand her fields as lists to prove the sword;
Not now the Vandal or the Visigoth
Pollute the plains, alike abhorring both;
Nor old Pelayo on his mountain rears
The warlike fathers of a thousand years.