On Seine's fair banks, amidst Parisian towers,
Gather a multitude! Slowly they come,
And mournfully. The very children weep;
And the stern soldier hath his sun-burnt face
Wet with unwonted tears. And see! From forth
The portals of a venerable church,
The mourners following, and the pall upborne
By white-haired ancients of the sorrowing land,
A coffin issues. Needless task, to tell
Whose pallid lineaments—whose clay-cold form
They bear to his long rest. France hath but ONE
So loved, so honored; nay, the world itself
Hath not another.
Who shall fill his place?
Who now, when suffering justice pleads, will hear?
And when humanity with fettered hands
Uplifted cries, who now will nerve the arm?
Who break the silken bands of pleasure, spurn
Ancestral pride, the pomp of courts, and sweet
Domestic love, and bare his bosom in
The generous strife?
Let us recall his acts
And teach them to our sons. Perchance the spark
Extinct, rekindling in some youthful heart,
The hero's spirit, will return to bless.
Who treads Columbia's soil, but knows his blood
Hath mingled with it, freely shed for us.
For injur'd France, impoverish'd and oppress'd,
In freedom's sacred cause, he next stood forth,
And despotism closed her long career.
But wild misrule uprose; and murder's arm
Was bared to strike. Lafayette interposed;—
Chief of a distant armed host, he wrote
And bade the legislative band beware!
Then Jacobinic tigers growled, muttering
A Cæsar! Slay him! At an army's head
He dictates to the Senate! Hush! he comes—
Alone, unarmed, save with the sword of truth,
And beards the monsters in their very den.
They quail, and freedom's sons arouse.
Then thou, poor sufferer, Louis had not died,
Nor hapless Antoinette, thy beauteous neck
Had never fed the greedy guillotine,
Nor yet had Olmutz' dreary dungeon held
That noble man, had ye but trusted him.
O'er the broad page of history, there comes
A meteor glare. Napoleon rises!
Other lights grow dim, or fade away;
But plagues are scattered from the burning trail—
Lafayette's star, tho' hid, moves on unquenched;
O'er fair La Grange it shines with beauteous ray,
And fosters in its beams domestic joy.
The comet sinks beneath Helena's rocks;
The star remains, undimmed, a guide to France.
But hath Columbia no gratitude?
She woos her brave deliverer to her arms!
Again he rides the wave; not now, as once,
The banner'd eagle droops the pensive wing,
But proudly fluttering, o'er his favorite's head
Bears high the starry crest.
He comes! resounds
Along Manhattan's strand and o'er her waves;
The city is unpeopled, thronged the shore,
Gay pennons wave, and cannon roar; men shout,
Children leap up, and aged veterans weep.
Even here he came; within these walls we saw
His face benign, and heard his kindly voice;
And here we blessed him in our artless song,
And raised our tearful eyes, and called him "father;"
And with a father's love he looked on us
And wept. And now HE sleeps in death, 'tis meet
That we should mourn. Would we could seek his grave,
With those the sorrowing ones, he loved the best,
There too would we, the mourning flowers of France,
And drooping willows plant, and kneel and weep.
Take comfort ye his offspring! God's own word
Is pledged to you; seed of a righteous man!
Lift up your downcast hearts, and joy for this,
That he hath died unchanged, as long he lived.
And tho' the perils of his age, outwent
The dangers of his youth, yet he hath stood,
And calm and fearless, tower'd above the storms
That scared the timid and o'erwhelmed the vile.
His fame shall be a light to future times;
But it shall fall in glance portentous,
On tyrants and their leagues; on the oppressed,
In gentle rays of pity and of hope,—
On dark hypocrisy, that hymns the name
Of liberty, to cheat for power, it falls,
Revealing guilt and shame. Meanwhile it shows
The good even as they are, not to be bought
No sold, nor daunted. Such a man was he,
Your father and your friend; nor yours alone;
Whoever bears man's image, he hath lost
A countryman, a father, and a friend!
Thus human nature mourns, and sympathy,
Wide as his generous heart, shall sooth your grief. |