- me.

[Byron, when publishing The Corsair, in January, 1814, announced an apparently quite serious resolution to withdraw, for some years at least, from poetry. His letters, of the February and March following, abound in repetitions of the same determination. On the morning of the ninth of April, he writes: 'No more rhyme for- or rather from I have taken my leave of that stage, and henceforth will mountebank it no longer.' In the evening, a Gazette Extraordinary announced the abdication of Fontainebleau, and the poet violated his vows next morning, by composing this Ode, which he immediately published, though without his name. His diary says: April 10. To-day I have boxed one hourwritten an Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte copied it eaten six biscuits - drunk four bottles of soda water, and redde away the rest of my time.']

The Desolator desolate !

The Victor overthrown! The Arbiter of others' fate

A Suppliant for his own!
Is it some yet imperial hope
That with such change can calmly cope?
Or dread of death alone?

To die a prince - or live a slave-
Thy choice is most ignobly brave!

He who of old would rend the oak,
Dream'd not of the rebound;
Chain'd by the trunk he vainly broke
Alone how look'd he round?
Thou, in the sternness of thy strength,
An equal deed hast done at length,

And darker fate hast found: He fell, the forest prowlers' prey; But thou must eat thy heart away!

The Roman, when his burning heart

Was slaked with blood of Rome, Threw down the dagger - dared depart, In savage grandeur, home.

He dared depart in utter scorn

Of men that such a yoke had borne,
Yet left him such a doom!

His only glory was that hour
Of self-upheld abandon'd power.

The Spaniard, when the lust of sway
Had lost its quickening spell,
Cast crowns for rosaries away,

An empire for a cell;

30

40

50

600