Alone he sleeps: the mountain cloud,

That night hangs round him, and the breath Of morning scatters, is the shroud

That wraps the conqueror's clay in death.

Pause here! The far-off world at last

Breathes free; the hand that shook its thrones, And to the earth its mitres cast,

Lies powerless now beneath these stones.

Hark! Comes there from the pyramids,
And from Siberian wastes of snow,

And Europe's hills, a voice that bids

The world be awed to mourn him?—No!

The only, the perpetual dirge

That's heard here, is the sea-bird's cry,

The mournful murmur of the surge,

The cloud's deep voice, the wind's low sigh.

John Pierpont.

THE PHANTOM SHIP.

THE clouds are dark, and the winds are wailing;

THE

The sky is deserted of moon and star.

It is the hour when the ship goeth sailing
Along the dusk ocean fast and far.

That lone ship, steered by a viewless hand,

And pauseless on her path,

No storm shall wreck; she shall reach the strand Unharmed by the elements' wrath.

Far out in the offing, where on the billows

The winds are dumb, and the stilled air dies, Arises a barren rock, and pillows

Its naked head amid burning skies.

There nothing bloometh of green or soft;

No blithe bird nestles there;

The eagle alone, from his throne aloft,
Reigns over a desert bare.

Yet there sleeps he who was Europe's lord,
Her king, her hero, her man of doom,
And his head-gear, golden sceptre, and sword
Lie noteless on his forsaken tomb.

No voice bewails the illustrious dead;

It is silentness all and dearth,

It is ghastly gloom round the last low bed
Of the mightiest spirit of earth!

And the moons roll round, and the seasons duly,
And stark the emperor lieth alway,

Till again in its course refalleth newly
The stormful night of the fifth of May.
Amiddle that black and dolorous night
He passed from this world of strife,
And, when it returns, in the swift year's flight,
He awakes for a while to life.

And now, as the conquered gale is dying,
The ship approaches in phantom-show,

A spectre-flag at her mast-head flying
Of golden bees on a field of snow.

And the king embarks, in the moonlight blue,
And away she hies as a bird,
Without a pilot, without a crew,

And with sails all wind-unstirred.

He paces her deck, that hero of story,

And looks abroad through the desert night.
His thoughts fly back to his years of glory;
His eyes rekindle with living light.
And on she speeds to the ancient shore
Of history and romance,

And the hero's heart leaps up once more,
He knows his beloved France!

Again he treadeth her soil, which trembles
Beneath the feet of the genius of war;

But, how changed seems all! The land resembles
The wreck, the shell of a burnt-out star!
He seeketh her cities, but findeth none,
He looks for her armies in vain,

They flourished, they lived, but under the sun
Of his resplendent reign!

He seeks the throne that he won by conquest;
"T is trod into dust with the things that were.
France knows it no more! Yet still hath he one

quest,

The father looks round for his royal heir;

He calls aloud for the boy whose birth
Was hailed as the hope of the age;
Alas! his life is outblotted from earth,
His name from history's page!

All, all are gone!" cries the desolate-hearted, "My glory, my people, my son, my crown! O, how are the days of my power departed! How lost is the nation I raised to renown! My house and my hopes alike lie prone

In an all-engulfing grave,

A slave sits now upon Cæsar's throne,
And Cæsar hath sunk to a slave!"

From the German. Tr. Anon.

FIT

THE EXHUMATION OF NAPOLEON.

IT tomb was St. Helena, O Napoleon, for thee! A barren rock, that far and lone was planted in the sea!

The wild untainted sea-gales there could sigh above thy turf,

And thy requiem was the moaning of the ever-plunging surf;

No busy jar of restless life, no hurrying feet were near, There came the watchful stars alone, and the revolv

ing year;

The scourge and dread of Europe, whose cannons' conquering roar

Pealed down the towering Pyrences and rang from shore to shore,

Whose restless and impatient heart in life could find

no room,

Had the ocean for a mourner, and an island for a

tomb.

Thy lifeless body they exhumed, when thou wast but

a name,

When thy tongue was still as silence, and thy ear was deaf to fame;

The exiled corpse, that could not harm, they lifted from the grave,

And in solemn triumph bore it to its home across the

wave;

Mid the shriek and wail of trumpets, in long and solemn train,

In thy funeral car they bore thee to thy grave beside the Seine.

And thou whose first return had been in triumph and

in pride,

When the glad acclaim of thousands was pealing far and wide,

When the warrior crowned with laurels came a throne

to reassume,

Came back at last, a silent corpse, to crumble in a tomb.

They laid thee, while the trifling world forgot the song and dance,

In a splendid mausoleum in the populous heart of

France;

The costly mockery of woe with the pageant passed away,

And thou, dead conqueror, couldst win from pleasure but a day;

Through all the city's arteries again in toil and strife Whirled on with eddying current the hurrying tide of

life;