Page:Poems Barrett.djvu/248

Napoleon! Sages, with high foreheads drooped,
Did use it for a problem: children small
Leapt up to greet it, as at manhood's call:
Priests blessed it from their altars overstooped
By meek-eyed Christs,—and widows with a moan
Spake it, when questioned why they sate alone.

That name consumed the silence of the snows
In Alpine keeping, holy and cloud-hid!
The mimic eagles dared what Nature's did,
And over-rushed her mountainous repose
In search of eyries: and the Egyptian river
Mingled the same word with its grand "For ever."

That name was shouted near the pyramidal
Egyptian tombs, whose mummied habitants,
Packed to humanity's significance,
Motioned it back with stillness! Shouts as idle
As hireling artists' work of myrrh and spice,
Which swathed last glories round the Ptolemies.

The world's face changed to hear it! Kingly men
Came down, in chidden babes' bewilderment,
From autocratic places—each content
With sprinkled ashes for anointing!—then
The people laughed or wondered for the nonce,
To see one throne a composite of thrones.

Napoleon! and the torrid vastitude
Of India felt, in throbbings of the air,
That name which scattered by disastrous blare
All Europe's bound-lines,—drawn afresh in blood!
Napoleon—from the Russias, west to Spain!
And Austria trembled—till ye heard her chain.

And Germany was 'ware—and Italy,
Oblivious of old fames—her laurel-locked,
High-ghosted Caesars passing uninvoked,—
Did crumble her own ruins with her knee,