Formerly the ruler of kings, he died and reposes in the place of his exile, affording a lesson to posterity of the uncertainty which hangs over human affairs;
“——it will teach
To after warriors more
Than high philosophy can preach,
And vainly preached before.”
The whole island may be viewed as the gigantic mausoleum of him, whose ambition raised him from a humble station to a palace, and, at last consigned him to a miserable rock, laved by the boisterous waves of the Atlantic, and which now contains all that remains of his former splendour and greatness.
“The desolator desolate!
The victor overthrown!
The arbiter of others’ fate
A suppliant for his own.”