Percy Bysshe Shelley , "Feelings of a Republican on the Fall of Bonaparte" (1816)
Transcribed from page 14 of the 1839 Edward Moxon edition of Percy Bysshe Shelley's Poetical Works, Volume III.
FEELINGS OF A REPUBLICAN ON THE FALL OF BONAPARTE.
- I HATED thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan
- To think that a most ambitious slave,
- Like thou, shouldst dance and revel on the grave
- Of Liberty. Thou mightst have built thy throne
- Where it had stood even now: thou didst prefer
- A frail and bloody pomp, which time has swept
- In fragments towards oblivion. Massacre,
- For this I prayed, would on thy sleep have crept,
- Treason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear, and Lust,
- And stifled thee, their minister. I know
- Too late, since thou and France are in the dust,
- That Virtue owns a more eternal foe
- Than force or fraud: old Custom, legal Crime,
- And bloody Faith, the foulest birth of time.
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