--Ah strange drama of Fate! what motley pageantries rise
On the stage of this make-shift world! what irony silenced in sighs!
In the strait beneath Etna for as the waves ebb, and Scylla betrays
The monster below, foul scales of the serpent and slime,--could we gaze
On Tyranny stript of her tinsel, what vision of dool and dismay!
Terror in confidence clothed, and anarchy biding her day:
Selfishness hero-mask'd; stage-tricks of the shabby-sublime;
Impotent gaspings at good; and the deluge after her time!
--Is it war that thunders o'er England, and bursts the millennial oak
From his base like a castle uprooted, and shears with impalpable stroke
The sails from the ocean, the houses of men, while the Conqueror lay
On the morn of his crowning mercy, and life flicker'd down with the day?
Is it war on the earth, or war in the skies, or Nature who tolls
Her passing-bell as from earth they go up, her imperial souls?
--He rests:--'Tis a lion-sleep: and the sternness of Truth is reproved:
The sleep of a leader of men; unhuman, to watch him unmoved!
In the stillness of pity and awe we remember his troublesome years,
For man is the magnet to man, and mortal failure has tears.
--He rests:--On the massive brows, as a rock by the sunrise is crown'd,
His passionate love for the land, in a glory-coronal bound!
And Mercy dawns fast o'er the dead, from the bier as we turn and depart,
England for England's sake clasp'd firm as a child to his heart.
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