Gourgaud, these tears are tears—but look, this laugh,
How hearty and serene—you see a laugh
Which settles to a smile of lips and eyes
Makes tears just drops of water on the leaves
When rain falls from a sun-lit sky, my friend,
Drink to me, clasp my hand, embrace me, call me
Beloved Bertrand. Ha! I sigh for joy.
Look at our Paris, happy, whole, renewed,
Refreshed by youth, new dressed in human leaves,
Shaking its fresh blown blossoms to the world.
And here we sit grown old, of memories
Top-full—your hand—my breast is all afire
With happiness that warms, makes young again.

You see it is not what we saw to-day
That makes me spirit, rids me of the flesh:—
But all that I remember, we remember
Of what the world was, what it is to-day,
Beholding how it grows. Gourgaud, I see
Not in the rise of this man or of that,
Nor in a battle's issue, in the blow
That lifts or fells a nation—no, my friend,
God is not there, but in the living stream
Which sweeps in spite of eddies, undertows,
Cross-currents, what you will, to that result
Where stillness shows the star that fits the star
Of truth in spirits treasured, imaged, kept
Through sorrow, blood and death,—God moves in that
And there I find Him.

But these tears—for whom
Or what are tears? The Old Guard—oh, my friend
That melancholy remnant! And the horse,
White, to be sure, but not Marengo, wearing
The saddle and the bridle which he used.
My tears take quality for these pitiful things,
But other quality for the purple robe
Over the coffin lettered in pure gold
"Napoleon"—ah, the emperor at last
Come back to Paris! And his spirit looks
Over the land he loved, with what result?
Does just the army that acclaimed him rise
Which rose to hail him back from Elba?—no
All France acclaims him! Princes of the church,
And notables uncover! At the door
A herald cries "The Emperor!" Those assembled
Rise and do reverence to him. Look at Soult,
He hands the king the sword of Austerlitz,
The king turns to me, hands the sword to me,
I place it on the coffin—dear Gourgaud,
Embrace me, clasp my hand! I weep and laugh
For thinking that the Emperor is home;
For thinking I have laid upon his bed
The sword that makes inviolable his bed,
Since History stepped to where I stood and stands
To say forever: Here he rests, be still,
Bow down, pass by in reverence—the Ages
Like giant caryatides that look
With sleepless eyes upon the world and hold
With never tiring hands the Vault of Time,
Command your reverence.

What have we seen?
Why this, that every man, himself achieving
Exhausts the life that drives him to the work
Of self-expression, of the vision in him,
His reason for existence, as he sees it.
He may or may not mould the epic stuff
As he would wish, as lookers on have hope
His hands shall mould it, and by failing take—
For slip of hand, tough clay or blinking eye,
A cinder for that moment in the eye—
A world of blame; for hooting or dispraise
Have all his work misvalued for the time,
And pump his heart up harder to subdue
Envy, or fear or greed, in any case
He grows and leaves and blossoms, so consumes
His soul's endowment in the vision of life.
And thus of him. Why, there at Fontainebleau
He is a man full spent, he idles, sleeps,
Hears with dull ears: Down with the Corsican,
Up with the Bourbon lilies! Royalists,
Conspirators, and clericals may shout
Their hatred of him, but he sits for hours
Kicking the gravel with his little heel,
Which lately trampled sceptres in the mud.
Well, what was he at Waterloo?—you know:
That piercing spirit which at mid-day power
Knew all the maps of Europe—could unfold
A map and say here is the place, the way,
The road, the valley, hill, destroy them here.
Why, all his memory of maps was blurred
The night before he failed at Waterloo.
The Emperor was sick, my friend, we know it.
He could not ride a horse at Waterloo.
His soul was spent, that's all. But who was rested?
The dirty Bourbons skulking back to Paris,
Now that our giant democrat was sick.
Oh, yes, the dirty Bourbons skulked to Paris
Helped by the Duke and BlÜcher, damn their souls.

What is a man to do whose work is done
And does not feel so well, has cancer, say?
You know he could have reached America
After his fall at Waterloo. Good God!
If only he had done it! For they say
New Orleans is a city good to live in.
And he had ceded to America
Louisiana, which in time would curb
The English lion. But he didn't go there.
His mind was weakened else he had foreseen
The lion he had tangled, wounded, scourged
Would claw him if it got him, play with him
Before it killed him. Who was England then?—

An old, mad, blind, despised and dying king
Who lost a continent for the lust that slew
The Emperor—the world will say at last
It was no other. Who was England then?
A regent bad as husband, father, son,
Monarch and friend. But who was England then?
Great Castlereagh who cut his throat, but who
Had cut his country's long before. The duke—
Since Waterloo, and since the Emperor slept—
The English stoned the duke, he bars his windows
With iron 'gainst the mobs who break to fury,
To see the Duke waylay democracy.
The world's great conqueror's conqueror!—Eh bien!
Grips England after Waterloo, but when
The people see the duke for what he is:
A blocker of reform, a Tory sentry,
A spotless knight of ancient privilege,
They up and stone him, by the very deed
Stone him for wronging the democracy
The Emperor erected with the sword.
The world's great conqueror's conqueror—Oh, I sicken!
Odes are like head-stones, standing while the graves
Are guarded and kept up, but falling down
To ruin and erasure when the graves
Are left to sink. Hey! there you English poets,
Picking from daily libels, slanders, junk
Of metal for your tablets 'gainst the Emperor,
Melt up true metal at your peril, poets,
Sweet moralists, monopolists of God.
But who was England? Byron driven out,
And courts of chancery vile but sacrosanct,
Despoiling Shelley of his children; Southey,
The turn-coat panegyrist of King George,
An old, mad, blind, despised, dead king at last;
A realm of rotten boroughs massed to stop
The progress of democracy and chanting
To God Almighty hymns for Waterloo,
Which did not stop democracy, as they hoped.
For England of to-day is freer—why?
The revolution and the Emperor!
They quench the revolution, send Napoleon
To St. Helena—but the ashes soar
Grown finer, grown invisible at last.
And all the time a wind is blowing ashes,
And sifting them upon the spotless linen
Of kings and dukes in England till at last
They find themselves mistaken for the people.
Drink to me, clasp my hand, embrace me—tiens!
The Emperor is home again in France,
And Europe for democracy is thrilling.
Now don't you see the Emperor was sick,
The shadows falling slant across his mind
To write to such an England: "My career
Is ended and I come to sit me down
Before the fireside of the British people,
And claim protection from your Royal Highness"—
This to the regent—"as a generous foe
Most constant and most powerful"—I weep.
They tricked him Gourgaud. Once upon the ship,
He thinks he's bound for England, and why not?
They dine him, treat him like an Emperor.
And then they tack and sail to St. Helena,
Give him a cow shed for a residence.
Depute that thing Sir Hudson Lowe to watch him,
Spy on his torture, intercept his letters,
Step on his broken wings, and mock the film
Descending on those eyes of failing fire. ...

One day the packet brought to him a book
Inscribed by Hobhouse, "To the Emperor."
Lowe kept the book but when the Emperor learned
Lowe kept the book, because 'twas so inscribed,
The Emperor said—I stood near by—"Who gave you
The right to slur my title? In a few years
Yourself, Lord Castlereagh, the duke himself
Will be beneath oblivion's dust, remembered
For your indignities to me, that's all.
England e

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