Page:Poems Sigourney, 1834.pdf/213

                                         There was a pause!
Mad revolution mourned its whirlwind wreck,
And even 'mid smouldering fires, the artificers
Wrought to uprear the pile.
                                            But all at once,
A bugle blast was heard—a courser's tramp—
While a young warrior waved his sword and cried—
"Away! Away!"—Like dreams the pageant fled,
Monarch, and royal dome, and nobles proud.
    So there he stood, in solitary power—
Supreme and self-derived. Where the rude Alps
Mock with their battlements the bowing cloud,
His eagle banner streamed. Pale Gallia poured
Strong incense to her idol, mixed with blood
Of her young conscript-hearts. Chained in wild wrath
The Austrian lion crouched. Even Cæsar's realm
Cast down its crown pontifical, and bade
The Eternal City lay her lip in dust.
The land of pyramids bent darkly down,
And from the subject nations rose a voice
Of wretchedness, that awed the trembling globe.
    Earth, slowly rising from her thousand thrones,
Did homage to the Corsican, as he
The favoured patriarch in his dream beheld
Heaven, with her sceptred blazonry of stars,
Bow to a reapers sheaf.
                                        But fickle man,
Though like the sea, he boast himself awhile,
Hath bounds to his supremacy. I saw
A listed field, where the embattled kings
Drew in deep wrath their armed legions on.
    The self-made warrior blenched not, and his eye
Was like the flashing lightning, when it cleaves
The vaulted firmament.
                                        In vain!—In vain!
The hour of fate had come. From a far isle,
'Gainst whose firm rocks the foiled Pacific roars,