Ambition bade thee over all to tower:
Full was thy fame! Alas! ’twas doomed to wane—
To fade like meteor glare or summer flower!
’Twas thus great Cæsar gloried in his power,
Till Rome was startled by his funeral knell:
Thus Cromwell shone, the starlet of an hour:
And thus Napoleon rose—and thus he fell!
List, Phœbus! hearest thou the vesper bell?
Sun of the Eve! thy sceptre is departed!
Clouds come as kinsmen round thy dying bed: