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Far reaching consequences to the race;

Where monarchs died like vilest criminals,

While Anarchy did sing her bacchanals,

And trampled in the mire, what once did grace,

The highest places and most hallowed creeds.

Where great Napoleon, a demigod,

Ascended to the pinnacle of fame

And pow’r most dread, who made the monarchs quail

Before his genius, until a wail

Of anguish rose mid ruin and the shame

Of empires, struck by heav’n’s avenging rod.

But even his greatness could not have its sway

O’er equilibriums by ages fixed;

His life was like the wierd and dazzling light

Of some stray star in its erratic flight,

Or like the image where the metals mixed,

The gold and silver with ignoble clay.

The head of gold, the feet of clay, and so

The little stone of Fate the giant felled,

The star erratic into exile sent,

Its lustre in ignominy misspent,

Still it had closed an age—whose doom was spelled,

The slave is free, the tyrant, too, must go.

But this was not the France Sordino knew,