The Re-entombment of Napoleon.
Of all the great and remarkable men of modern times, Napoleon Bonaparte was the most wonderful. He was a son of a lawyer of Corsica, an island in the Mediterranean sea, belonging to France. From a humble station he rose to be the emperor of France, and the greatest general of modern times. He hurled kings from their thrones, and put others in their places. He dismembered empires, and created new ones. He made the whole earth ring with his mighty deeds. But one thing he could not do—he could not conquer himself. His ambition led him on from one step of injustice to another, till the embattled armies of Europe appeared in the field against him. He was defeated, dethroned, and taken on board a British ship to the rocky and lonely island of St. Helena, where he died in 1821.
After being entombed for almost twenty years, the king, Louis Philippe, sent out a ship to bring back his body to France, to be re-entombed in the capital of the empire of which he once swayed the sceptre. The hearts of many of the French people adore the name of Napoleon; and the ceremony of his re-entombment, which has just taken place at Paris, is the theme of the fallowing lines.
Sound the trumpet, roll the drum!
Come in long procession, come!
Come with sword and come with lance,
Children of heroic France;
Come from castle’s frowning wall,
Come from the ancestral hall,
Come, poor peasant, from thy shed,