Him on his throne and glorious Silent saw I, that never-- When with awful vicissitude He sank, rose, fell forever-- Mixed my voice with the numberless Voices that pealed on high; Guiltless of servile flattery And of the scorn of coward, Come I when darkness suddenly On so great light hath lowered, And offer a song at his sepulcher That haply shall not die. From the Alps unto the Pyramids, From Rhine to Manzanares Unfailingly the thunderstroke His lightning purpose carries; Bursts from Scylla to Tanais,-- From one to the other sea. Was it true glory?--Posterity, Thine be the hard decision; Bow we before the mightiest, Who willed in him the vision Of his creative majesty Most grandly traced should be. The eager and tempestuous Joy of the great plan's hour, The throe of the heart that controllessly Burns with a dream of power, And wins it, and seizes victory It had seemed folly to hope-- All he hath known: the infinite Rapture after the danger, The flight, the throne of sovereignty, The salt bread of the stranger; Twice 'neath the feet of the worshipers, Twice 'neath the altar's cope. He spoke his name; two centuries, Armed and threatening either, Turned unto him submissively, As waiting fate together; He made a silence, and arbiter He sat between the two. He vanished; his days in the idleness Of his island-prison spending, Mark of immense malignity, And of a pity unending, Of hatred inappeasable, Of deathless love and true. As on the head of the mariner, Its weight some billow heaping, Falls even while the castaway, With strained sight far sweeping, Scanneth the empty distances For some dim sail in vain; So over his soul the memories Billowed and gathered ever! How oft to tell posterity Himself he did endeavor, And on the pages helplessly Fell his weary hand again. How many times, when listlessly In the long, dull day's declining-- Downcast those glances fulminant, His arms on his breast entwining-- He stood assailed by the memories Of days that were passed away; He thought of the camps, the arduous Assaults, the shock of forces, The lightning-flash of the infantry, The billowy rush of horses, The thrill in his supremacy, The eagerness to obey. Ah, haply in so great agony His panting soul had ended Despairing, but that potently A hand, from heaven extended, Into a clearer atmosphere In mercy lifted him. And led him on by blossoming Pathways of hope ascending To deathless fields, to happiness All earthly dreams transcending, Where in the glory celestial Earth's fame is dumb and dim.