A restless, weak usurper,
Striving to rear a throne,
Filling his fame with counsels
And conquests not his own;—
Now seeming to put from him
The sceptre of command,
Only that he might grasp it
With yet a firmer hand;—
His country's trusted leader,
In league with his country's foes,
Stabbing the cause that nursed him,
And openly serving those;—
The chief of a great republic
Plotting rebellion still,—
An apostate faithful only
To his own ambitious will.
Drunk with a vain ambition,
In his feeble, reckless hand,
The sword of Eternal Justice
Became but a brawler's brand.
And Colombia was dissevered,
Rent by factions, till at last
Her name among the nations
Is a memory of the past.
Here the grim old Venezuelan
Puffed fiercely his red cigar
A brief moment, then in the ocean
It vanished like a star;
And he slumbered in his hammock;
And only the ceaseless rush
Of the reeling and sparkling waters
Filled the solemn midnight hush,
As I leaned by the swinging gunwale
Of the good ship, sailing slow,
With the steadfast heavens above her,
And the molten heavens below.
Then I thought with sorrow and yearning
Of my own distracted land,
And the sword let down from heaven
To flame in her ruler's hand,—