The Poems of Emma Lazarus, Volume 1

DESTINY.

                         1856.

     Paris, from throats of iron, silver, brass,
     Joy-thundering cannon, blent with chiming bells,
     And martial strains, the full-voiced paean swells.
     The air is starred with flags, the chanted mass
     Throngs all the churches, yet the broad streets swarm
     With glad-eyed groups who chatter, laugh, and pass,
     In holiday confusion, class with class,
     And over all the spring, the sun-floods warm!
     In the Imperial palace that March morn,
     The beautiful young mother lay and smiled;
     For by her side just breathed the Prince, her child,
     Heir to an empire, to the purple born,
     Crowned with the Titan's name that stirs the heart
     Like a blown clarion—one more Bonaparte.

                         1879.

     Born to the purple, lying stark and dead,
     Transfixed with poisoned spears, beneath the sun
     Of brazen Africa!  Thy grave is one,
     Fore-fated youth (on whom were visited
     Follies and sins not thine), whereat the world,
     Heartless howe'er it be, will pause to sing
     A dirge, to breathe a sigh, a wreath to fling
     Of rosemary and rue with bay-leaves curled.
     Enmeshed in toils ambitious, not thine own,
     Immortal, loved boy-Prince, thou tak'st thy stand
     With early doomed Don Carlos, hand in hand
     With mild-browed Arthur, Geoffrey's murdered son.
     Louis the Dauphin lifts his thorn-ringed head,
     And welcomes thee, his brother, 'mongst the dead.