Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE EMPEROR'S FUNERAL, by GEORGE LUNT


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE EMPEROR'S FUNERAL, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: And rolled in light the silver seine
Last Line: Nor man, nor fiend had mocked his bier!
Subject(s): Courts & Courtiers; Funerals; Burials


AND rolled in light the silver Seine
Through festal banks its flowery way,—
Shall not an Empire's choral strain
Hail the triumphal day?
He comes,—and drooped on ocean's foam
His lilied banner waves unfurled,
Comes, from his sea-beat island, home,
The victor of a world;
Falls, far away, the chanting surge,
Like echoes of a muttered dirge.

'Tis He, who gave the nations law,
While subject kings around him bowed,—
Nor hushed, as now, in breathless awe,
Stood the gay city's crowd;
Not then was heard this minute-swell
From sullen throats of iron tone,
Nor then Notre-Dame's funereal bell
Gave voice to such a moan;
Nor rose between, these notes that flow,
Like airy wailings, full of woe.

He comes, the minion child of Fame,
Who made a hundred fields his own,
And sprang, on conquest's wings of flame,
To his delirious throne!
Oh, if reluctant Fate had given
His youthful eye some prophet-view,
'Mid the wild Sections' crashing levin,—
Of fatal Waterloo,—
Silent, perchance, these spirit tones
Of stifled shrieks and muffled groans!

'Tis He, the Man of Destiny!
Whose cohorts princes proudly led,
Where'er he bade his eagles fly,
Above the slaughtered dead;
To the same heartless purpose true,
That claimed earth's empires for his own,
In the bright halls of sweet St. Cloud,
On Elba's mimic throne;
What greetings these, whose sound of fear
Breaks the dread silence of his bier!

From sands, where marble music sings
A song to morning's orient lids,
And lines of long-forgotten kings
Built nameless pyramids;
From cliffs, where but the Tyrol horn
Had roused the freeman's hunter-band,
To meads, whose flowery breath is borne
Along the Cesar's land,—
Come shadowy voices on the gale,
Of mountain-shout and sobbing wail.

Oh, once he came, on triumph's breath,
From soft Italia's myrtle bowers,
And once, from fields of icy death,
By Moscow's blazing towers;
And once again, from Belgium's plain,
That groaned with its uncounted dead,
And left his eagles, with its slain,
Trampled and slaughter-red;
Now, Beresina's shrieking waves
Hail Waterloo's re-opening graves!

He comes once more, —the sullen main
Restores him from his lonely cell,
To sleep, where laves the silver Seine
That France he loved so well;
He comes,—and all his stormy life,
Whose sun was quenched in clouds and gloom,
No triumph bought, through fiery strife,
Like that which gilds his tomb!
This mockery of a fickle breath
Chanting unmeaning hymns to Death!

Yet where his pageant's ancient soul?
Sons of St. Louis! wherefore here?
Far other tones of woe should roll
Above 'the Emperor's' bier!
Oh where Massena, Lannes, Dessaix,
Through battle's cloud each flaming star?
He, braver than the bravest, Ney,—
Thy snow-white plume, Murat?
I see, I see, on either hand
They come, they weep, a shadowy band!

Ah yes, Notre-Dame! thy pomp were dull
And strange, if such were wanting there,—
Thy peopled courts are not so full
As is the peopled air!
From sands and crags and rolling streams,
From gory plains and seas of storms,
Rise, like the thronging shapes of dreams,
Their gashed and grisly forms!
And He! 'tis He, whose icy eye
Glares on the painted pageantry!

Oh, could he call one moment back
The flush of his adventurous youth,—
Snatch, from the stain of glory's track,
His heart's first idol, Truth!
Clasp closer still the Passion-flower
He spurned from his unmanly breast,—
Away, false dreams of fruitless power!
And earth had been at rest;—
Nor hollow lies, nor pomp's cold tear,
Nor man, nor fiend had mocked his bier!





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