The works of Lord Byron :: :: University of Virginia Library

Enough of this—a sight more mournful woos
The averted eye of the reluctant Muse.
The Imperial daughter, the Imperial bride,
The imperial Victim—sacrifice to pride;
The mother of the Hero's hope, the boy,
The young Astyanax of Modern Troy;
The still pale shadow of the loftiest Queen
That Earth has yet to see, or e'er hath seen;
She flits amidst the phantoms of the hour,
The theme of pity, and the wreck of power.
Oh, cruel mockery! Could not Austria spare
A daughter? What did France's widow there?
Her fitter place was by St. Helen's wave,
Her only throne is in Napoleon's grave.
But, no,—she still must hold a petty reign,
Flanked by her formidable chamberlain;
The martial Argus, whose not hundred eyes
Must watch her through these paltry pageantries.

577

What though she share no more, and shared in vain,
A sway surpassing that of Charlemagne,
Which swept from Moscow to the southern seas!
Yet still she rules the pastoral realm of cheese,
Where Parma views the traveller resort,
To note the trappings of her mimic court.
But she appears! Verona sees her shorn
Of all her beams—while nations gaze and mourn—
Ere yet her husband's ashes have had time
To chill in their inhospitable clime;
(If e'er those awful ashes can grow cold;—
But no,—their embers soon will burst the mould;)
She comes!—the Andromache (but not Racine's,
Nor Homer's,)—Lo! on Pyrrhus' arm she leans!
Yes! the right arm, yet red from Waterloo,
Which cut her lord's half-shattered sceptre through,
Is offered and accepted? Could a slave
Do more? or less?—and he in his new grave!
Her eye—her cheek—betray no inward strife,
And the Ex-Empress grows as Ex a wife!
So much for human ties in royal breasts!
Why spare men's feelings, when their own are jests?