They laid him in the earth, and on his breast,
Besides the wound that sent his soul to rest,
They found the scattered dints of many a scar,
Which were not planted there in recent war:
Where'er had passed his summer years of life,
It seems they vanished in a land of strife;
But all unknown his glory or his guilt,
These only told that somewhere blood was spilt;
And Ezzelin, who might have spoke the past,
Returned no more—that night appeared his fast.
The dark manner of Ezzelin's disappearance is not satisfactorily explained, but the reader is left to gather it from this recital : Upon that night (a peasant's is the tale)
A serf that crossed the intervening vale,
When Cynthia's light almost gave way to morn,
And nearly veiled in mist her waning horn;
A serf, that rose betimes to tread the wood,
And hew the bough that bought his children's food,
Passed by the river that divides the plain
Of Otho's lands and Lara's broad domain :
He heard a tramp-a horse and horseman broke
From out the wood-before him was a cloak
Wrapt round some burden at his saddle-bow,
Bent was his head, and hidden was his brow.
Roused by the sudden sight at such a time,
And some foreboding that it might be crime,
Himself unheeded watched the stranger's course,
Who reached the river, bounded from his horse,
And, lifting thence the burden which he bore,
Heaved up the bank, and dashed it from the shore;
Then paused, and looked, and turned, and seemed to watch
And still another hurried glance would snatch,
And follow with his step the stream that flowed,
As if e'en yet too much its surface showed:
At once he started, stooped, around him strown
The winter floods had scattered heaps of stone;
Of these the heaviest thence he gathered there,
And slung them with a more than common care.
Meantime the serf had crept to where unseen
Himself might safely mark what this might mean;
He caught a glimpse as of a floating breast,
And something glittered starlike on the vest;
But, ere he well could mark the buoyant trunk,
A massy fragment smote it, and it sunk :
It rose again, but indistinct to view,
And left the waters of a purple hue,
Then deeply disappeared: the horseman gazed
Till ebbed the latest eddy it had raised;
Then, turning, vaulted on his pawing steed,
And instant spurred him into panting speed.
His face was masked-the features of the dead,
If dead it were, escaped the observer's dread;
But, if in sooth a star his bosom bore,
Such is the badge that knighthood ever wore,
And such 'lis known Sir Ezzelin had worn
Upon the night that led to such a morn.
If thus he perished, Heaven receive his soul!
His undiscoverd limbs to ocean roll;
And charity upon the hope would dwell
It was not Lara's hand by which he fell.
The sorrowing Kaled dies distracted and broken-hearted:
And Kaled-Lara-Ezzelin-are gone,
Alike without their monumental stone!
The first all efforts vainly strove to wean
From lingering where her chieftain's blood had been
Grief had so tamed a spirit once too proud,
Her tears were few, her wailing never loud;
But furious, would you tear her from the spot
Where yet she scarce believed that he was not,
Her eye shot forth with all the living fire
That haunts the tigress in her whelpless ire;
But, left to waste her weary moments there,
She talked all idly unto shapes of air,
Such as the busy brain of Sorrow paints,
And woos to listen to her fond complaints:
And she would sit beneath the very tree
Where lay his drooping head upon her knee
And, in that posture where she saw him fall,
His words, his looks, his dying grasp, recall;
And she had shorn, but saved, her raven hair,
And oft would snatch it from her bosom there,
And fold, and press it gently to the ground,
As if she stanched anew some phantom's wound.
Herself would question, and for him reply;
Then, rising, start, and beckon him to fly
From some imagined spectre in pursuit ;
Then seat her down upon some linden's root,
And hide her visage with her meagre hand,
Or trace strange characters along the sand.
This could not last-she lies by him she loved;
Her tale untold her truth too dearly proved.
It would be difficult to find any thing more really touching, more full of that irresistible pathos which female sorrow always inspires, than the conclusion of the above stanza.
Nearly at the same period Lord Byron published another poem, of very different character, which he called an Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte.'
The following epigraphe, from Gibbon's Decline and Fall,' was prefixed:
The Emperor Nepos was acknowledged by the senate, by the Italians, and by the provincials of Gaul; his moral virtues and military talents were loudly celebrated; and those who derived any private benefit from his government announced in prophetic strains the restoration of public felicity.
By this shameful abdication, he protracted his life a few years, in a very ambiguous state, between an emperor and an exile, till'
This poem, like all others written upon subjects passing immediately before the author's eyes, and of a purely personal nature, is far inferior to those on which he devoted the high powers of his invention and genius. There are, however, some fine passages in it:
'Tis done-but yesterday a king!
And armed with kings to strive
And now thou art a nameless thing
So abject-yet alive!
Is this the man of thousand thrones,
Who strewed our earth with hostile bones,
And can he thus survive?
Since he, miscalled the Morning Star,
Nor man nor fiend hath fallen so far.
Ill-minded man! why scourge thy kind,
Who bowed so low the knee?
By gazing on thyself grown bliud,
Thou taught'st the rest to see.
With might unquestioned-power to save-
Thine only gift hath been the grave
To those that worshipped thee;
Nor till thy fall could mortals guess
Ambition's less than littleness!
After some feeble comparisons with other conquerors the poem con
But thou-from thy reluctant hand
The thunderbolt is wrung
Too late thou leav'st the high command
To which thy weakness clung:
All evil spirit as thou art,
It is enough to grieve the heart
To see thine own unstrung;
To think that God's fair world hath been
The footstool of a thing so mean;
And Earth hath spilt her blood for him,
Who thus can hoard his own!
And monarchs bowed the trembling limb,
And thanked him for a throne!
Fair Freedom! we may hold thee dear,
When thus thy mightiest foes their fear
In humblest guise have shown.
Oh! ne'er may tyrant leave behind
A brighter name to lure mankind!
Thine evil deeds are writ in gore,
Nor written thus in vain-
Thy triumphs tell of fame no more,
Or deepen every stain.
If thou hadst died as honour dies,
Some new Napoleon might arise,
To shame the world again-
But who would soar the solar height,
To set in such a starless night?
The following is the best stanza in the poem:
And she, proud Austria's mournful flower,
Thy still imperial bride;
How bears her breast the torturing hour?
Still clings she to thy side?
Must she too bend, must she too share
Thy late repentance, long despair,
Thou throneless homicide?
If still she loves thee, hoard that gem-
'Tis worth thy vanished diadem!
The prediction in the latter of the two following stauzas has been verified, but hardly so soon as the bard perhaps fancied. Such prophecies are always on the safe side, so rapid is the course of mortality, and the chances were quite as much in favour of the death of one as of the other, of the soothsayer and of the fallen emperor:
Then haste thee to thy sullen isle,
And gaze upon the sea;
That element may meet thy smile,
It ne'er was ruled by thee!
Or trace with thine all idle hand
In loitering mood upon the sand
That Earth is now as free!
That Corinth's pedagogue hath now
Transferred his by-word to thy brow.
Thou Timour! in his captive's cage
What thoughts will there be thine,
While brooding in thy prisoned rage?
But one- The world was mine :'
Unless, like he of Babylon,
All sense is with thy sceptre gone,
Life will not long confine
That spirit poured so widely forth-
So long obeyed-so little worth!
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