Three islands, like the sister Fates,
His life-thread wove upon their loom
From fair Ajaccio's silvered gates
To Saint Helena's mournful tomb;—
The first, his birthplace; whence appeared
His baleful star with lurid glow;
Next, Elba, where the world still feared
The fugitive from Fontainebleau;
Last, England's lonely prison-block,
Grim fragment 'neath a tropic sky,
Where, like Prometheus on his rock,
The captive Caesar came to die,
O Corsica, sublimely wild
And riven by the winds and waves,
Thy fame is deathless from thy child,
Whose glory filled a million graves.
TO THE VENUS OF MELOS
O goddess of that Grecian isle
Whose shores the blue Aegean laves,
Whose cliffs repeat with answering smile
Their features in its sun-kissed waves!
An exile from thy native place,
We view thee in a northern clime;
Yet mark on thy majestic face
A glory still undimmed by Time.
Through those calm lips, proud goddess, speak!
Portray to us thy gorgeous fane,
Where Melian lovers thronged to seek
Thine aid, Love's paradise to gain;
And where, as in the saffron east,
Day's jewelled gates were open flung,
With stately pomp the attendant priest
Drew back the veil before thee hung;
And when the daring kiss of morn,
Empurpling, made thy charms more fair,
Sweet strains from unseen minstrels borne
Awoke from dreams the perfumed air.