Classic Poem

He died not in the battle broil;
Girt by the noble and the brave;
The warlike chiefs, who shared his spoil, —
The kings, whose realms he won and gave:
No monarch held his sobbing breath,
By that imperial bed of death;
And save some stern-eyed veterans there,
Who struggling checked the bitter sigh,
And the priest's voice in muttered prayer,
They left him all alone to die!

But round thy princely dying bed,
Fair scion of so rude a strain!
How many a fruitless tear was shed, —
How many a sob repress'd in vain!
For thou art dead! a summer flower,
That withered in one little hour;
Or like the stately sapling, broke
And ruined by the first rude blast;
While HE fell, like the gnarled oak,
Beneath the thousandth storm at last!

H E died within those niggard walls,
A nation's shame, — a hero's shrine, —
And thou within the palace-halls
Of royal Hapsburgh's ancient line:
Pomp chaunted forth thy funeral wail, —
His requiem was the rising gale!
And down amid their kingly brood
They laid in dust thy youthful head, —
The majesty of solitude
Received HIM to his narrow bed!

And loud and sad the sullen bell
Told when thy soul forsook its clay:
But louder was the pealing knell,
When HIS siern spirit burst away:
O'er his lone island, fierce and far,
Howled out the elemental war;
And high above, — beneath, — around, —
The headlong storm in fury poured,
And lashed and rent the reeling ground, —
And the eternal ocean roared!

His life was like the torrent's force,
Swift and resistless in its sweep;
But thine had flowed a gentler course,
With human virtues full and deep.

H E strode from Egypt's pyramids
To Alpine snows, o'er human heads;
He rode with Victory, — and unfurled
His haughty flag to every blast;
He trampled on a prostrate world,
That turned and trampled him at last!

So should it ever be, — that pride
May learn how low its loftiest state!
And they, who mourned him, justified
Such haughty empire's humbling fate:
His end was like a prophet-word
To King and Caesar, — crown and sword!
But with his offspring's youthful bier
Hope, love and joy went down in gloom;
France wept the sire; — but Europe's tear
Bewails the son's untimely tomb!