James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902.
December 15The Return of Napoleon from St. Helena
By Lydia Huntley Sigourney (1791–1865)
H
Paris! what festal rite
Doth call thy thronging million forth,
All eager for the sight?
Thy soldiers line the streets
In fixed and stern array,
With buckled helm and bayonet,
As on the battle-day.
Heads in dense masses rise,
And tower and battlement and tree
Are studded thick with eyes.
Comes there some conqueror home
In triumph from the fight,
With spoil and captives in his train,
The trophies of his might?
A martial host is nigh;
France pours in long succession forth
Her pomp of chivalry.
No clarion marks their way,
No victor trump is blown;
Why march they on so silently,
Told by their tread alone?
A gorgeous car of state!
The white-plumed steeds in cloth of gold,
Bow down beneath its weight;
And the noble war-horse, led
Caparisoned along,
Seems fiercely for his lord to ask,
As his red eye scans the throng.
The incense flameth high,—
Comes there some demi-god of old?
No answer!—No reply!
Who rideth on yon car?—
No shout his minions raise,
But by a lofty chapel dome
The muffled hero stays.
And with uncovered head
Receives him in the name of France:
Receiveth whom?—The dead!
Was he not buried deep
In island cavern drear,
Girt by the sounding ocean surge?
How came that sleeper here?
Beneath a peaceful pall,
That thus he brake his stony tomb,
Ere the strong angel’s call?
Hark! hark! the requiem swells,
A deep soul-thrilling strain!
An echo, never to be heard
By mortal ear again.
Whose fiat millions slew,—
The soaring eagle of the Alps,
The crushed at Waterloo:—
The banished who returned,
The dead who rose again,
And rode in his shroud the billows proud
To the sunny banks of Seine.
That warrior strong and bold,—
The imperial crown with jewels bright,
Upon his ashes cold,
While round those columns proud
The blazoned banners wave,
That on a hundred fields he won
With the heart’s-blood of the brave;
His veterans scarred and old,
Whose wounds on Lodi’s cleaving bridge
Or purple Leipsic told.
Yes, there, with arms reversed,
Slow pacing, night and day,
Close watch beside the coffin kept
Those veterans grim and gray.
Is it sorrow for the dead,
Or memory of the fearful strife
Where their country’s legions fled?
Of Borodino’s blood?
Of Beresina’s wail?
The horrors of that dire retreat,
Which turned old History pale?
Is it sorrow for the dead,
Or a shuddering at the wintry shaft
By Russian tempests sped?
Where countless mounds of snow
Marked the poor conscript’s grave,
And, pierced by frost and famine, sank
The bravest of the brave.
The gathered darkness mock,
And velvet drapes his hearse, who died
On bare Helena’s rock;
And from the altar near,
A never-ceasing hymn
Is lifted by the chanting priests
Beside the taper dim.
In the land where shadows reign,
Hast thou met the flocking ghosts of those
Who at thy nod were slain?
Oh, when the cry of that spectral host
Like a rushing blast shall be,
What will thine answer be to them?
And what thy God’s to thee?