NAPOLEON AT ISOLA BELLA.

O fairy island of a fairy sea,

Wherein Calypso might have spell'd the Greek,

Or Flora piled her fragrant treasury,

Cull'd from each shore her Zephyr's wings could seek.—

From rocks, where aloes blow.

Tier upon tier, Hesperian fruits arise;

The hanging bowers of this soft Babylon;

An India mellows in the Lombard skies,

And changelings, stolen from the Lybian sun,

Smile to yon Alps of snow.

Amid this gentlest dream-land of the wave,

Arrested, stood the wondrous Corsican;

As if one glimpse the better angel gave

Of the bright garden-life vouschafed to man

Ere blood defiled the world.

He stood — that grand Sesostris of the North —

While paused the car to which were harness'd kings;

And in the airs, that lovingly sigh'd forth

The balms of Araby, his eagle-wings

Their sullen thunder furl'd.

And o'er the marble hush of those large brows,

Dread with the awe of the Olympian nod,

A giant laurel spread its breathless boughs,

The prophet-tree of the dark Pythian god,

Shadowing the doom of thrones!

What, in such hour of rest and scene of joy,

Stirs in the cells of that unfathom'd brain?

Comes back one memory of the musing boy,

Lone gazing o'er the yet unmeasured main,

Whose waifs are human bones?

To those deep eyes doth one soft dream return?

Soft with the bloom of youth's unrifled spring,

When Hope first fills from founts divine the urn,

And rapt Ambition, on the angel's wing,

Floats first through golden air?

Or doth that smile recall the midnight street,

When thine own star the solemn ray denied,

And to a stage-mime, for obscure retreat

From hungry Want, the destined Caesar sigh'd?—

Still Fate, as then, asks prayer.

Under that prophet tree, thou standest now;

Inscribe thy wish upon the mystic rind;

Hath the warm human heart no tender vow

Link'd with sweet household names?— no hope enshrined

Where thoughts are priests of Peace.

Or, if dire Hannibal thy model be,

Dread lest, like him, thou bear the thunder home!

Perchance ev'n now a Scipio dawns for thee,

Thou doomest Carthage while thou smitest Rome —

Write, write “Let carnage cease!”

Whispers from heaven have strife itself inform'd;—

“Peace” was our dauntless Falkland's latest sigh,

Navarre's frank Henry fed the forts he storm'd.

Wild Xerxes wept the Hosts he doom'd to die!

Ev'n War pays dues to Love!

Note how harmoniously the art of Man

Blends with the Beautiful of Nature! see

How the true Laurel of the Delian

Shelters the Grace!— Apollo's peaceful tree

Blunts ev'n the bolt of Jove.

Write on the sacred bark such votive prayer,

As the mild Power may grant in coming years,

Some word to make thy memory gentle there;—

More than renown, kind thought for men endears

A Hero to Mankind.

Slow moved the mighty hand — a tremour shook

The leaves, and hoarse winds groan'd along the wood;

The Pythian tree the damning sentence took,

And to the sun the battle-word of blood

Glared from the gashing rind.

So thou hast writ the word, and sign'd thy doom:

Farewell, and pass upon thy gory way,

The direful skein the pausing Fates resume!

Let not the Elysian grove thy steps delay

From thy Promethean goal.

The fatal tree the abhorrent word retain'd,

Till the last Battle on its bloody strand

Flung what were nobler had no life remain'd,—

The crownless front and the disarmed hand

And the’ foil'd Titan Soul;

Now, year by year, the warrior's iron mark

Crumbles away from the majestic tree,

The indignant life-sap ebbing from the bark

Where the grim death-word to Humanity

Profaned the Lord of Day.

High o'er the pomp of blooms, as greenly still,

Aspires that tree — the Archetype of Fame,

The stem rejects all chronicle of ill;

The bark shrinks back — the tree survives the same —

The record rots away.