In Bordighera's groves of palm I linger at the close of day, And watch, beyond the ocean's calm, A range of mountains far away. Their snowy summits, white and cold, Flush crimson like a tinted shell, As sinks the sun in clouds of gold Behind the peaks of Esterel. No unsubstantial shapes are they, -- The offspring of the mist and sea; No splendid vision of Cathay, Recalled in dreamful revery; Their solid bastions, -- towering high Though rooted in earth's primal plan, -- Proclaim to every passer by The cradle of the Corsican. What martial soul there found rebirth, When on those cliffs, then scarcely known, There once more visited the earth The spirit called Napoleon? Three islands, like the sister Fates, His life-thread wove upon their loom From fair Ajaccio's silvered gates To Saint Helena's mournful tomb; -- The first, his birthplace; whence appeared His baleful star with lurid glow; Next, Elba, where the world still feared The fugitive from Fontainebleau; Last, England's lonely prison-block, Grim fragment 'neath a tropic sky, Where, like Prometheus on his rock, The captive Caesar came to die. O Corsica, sublimely wild And riven by the winds and waves, Thy fame is deathless from thy child, Whose glory filled a million graves. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SCHOOLS OF LITTLE FISH by MARVIN BELL COMING DOWN TO THE DESERT AT LORDBURG, N.M. by HAYDEN CARRUTH CONTRA MORTEM: THE TREES by HAYDEN CARRUTH SISTER MARIA CELESTE, GALILEO'S DAUGHTER, WRITES TO FRIEND by MADELINE DEFREES THE FLOWER BOAT by ROBERT FROST DAWN by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON |