For the Southern Literary Messenger.
NAPOLEON.
| Aye! there he lies,—the mighty one! Death's hand is on him now; And fearfully he puts his seal Upon that haughty brow. What boots it that his own proud name In foreign lands has rung? That orators his fame have spoke, That bards his deeds have sung? What boots it that the hills of Spain Shook 'neath his lordly tread— That with the blood of her best sons, Her vallies' streams ran red? That over Moscow's battlements, His flag-folds he shook out— That e'en the lofty pyramids Rang with his charging shout? He who subdu'd so many lands, Must now from England crave (Although she is his deadliest foe) What man last wants—a grave! |
For the Southern Literary Messenger.
MR. WHITE,—You have published at page 199 of your January number, four outlandish-looking lines, with a hope that some one of your numerous readers may not only be able to inform your correspondent who furnished them, in what language they are written, but let him still further into the secret by giving their meaning. Happening to know a little of the Gaelic, I have no hesitation in saying that that is the tongue in which they are written; and further, I think I have succeeded, after a good deal of trouble, in discovering to a certainty that they are a translation of the first stanza of Sappho's celebrated Ode addressed "To the Beloved Pair," and commented upon at some length by Longinus, in the tenth section of his De Sublimitate. The stanza in question runs thus:
[For want of proper type we cannot give it in the Greek.—Ed.]