THE RETURN OF NAPOLEON. 263
A requiem for the chief,
Whose fiat millions slew, The soaring eagle of the Alps,
The crushed at Waterloo, The banished who returned,
The dead uho rose again, And rode in his shroud the billows proud,
To the sunny banks of Seine.
They laid him there in state.
That warrior strong and bold, The imperial crown, with jewels bright,
Upon his ashes cold ; While round those columns proud
The blazoned banners wave, That on a hundred fields he won,
With the heart s-blood of the brave.
And sternly there kept guard
His veterans scarred and old, Whose wounds of Lodi s cleaving bridge,
Or purple Leipsic told. Yes, there, with arms reversed,
Slow pacing, night and day, Close watch beside the coffin kept
Those veterans grim and gray.
A cloud is on their brow,
Is it sorrow for the dead? Or memory of the fearful strife,
Where their country s legions fled ?
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