James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902.
January 9Death of Louis Napoleon
By Christopher Pearse Cranch (18131892)
H
This bold, pretending patron of the age!
Muzzled the press, yet bade the people think;
Knelt to the Pope, but gave the crowd a wink;
Now capped a Cardinal, now endowed a school;
Permitted suffrage, under iron rule;
Gave wings to trade, but clogged all daring thought,
Counting all counsel but his own as naught;
Put new wine in old bottles, best in worst,
And clamped them round with iron, lest they burst;
Forced two extremes to marry, last with first;
Wed light to darkness, and misnamed the brood
Born of the union, France’s highest good.
He hoped to split our continent in twain;
And while our back is turned to grasp our foe,
Drives in an Austrian wedge at Mexico;
Finds he has bungled sadly, and would fain
Withdraw poor Maximilian again.
Would like to recall his forces too from Rome,
But fears the hubbub of his priests at home.
So, pledged to God and Mammon, he prolongs
The strife with chaos, smiles on rights and wrongs;
The Pope’s non possumus most blandly hears,
And leaves poor Rome in misery and tears;
Opens and shuts a people’s prison-door.
O’er Europe’s face there sweeps a mighty change.
Now Germany compact and bristling stands
Guarding her blue Rhine from the invader’s hands.
Now Venice sets her sea-pearl in the ring
Worn by young Italy’s victorious king.
Now Rome, e’en Rome, must add her eternal fame
To a throne upborne by Garabaldi’s name;
Unguarded by her Gallic sentinel,
She loosely holds the keys of heaven and hell;
Her Pope, whose thunders rattled west and east,
Changed by a pen-scrawl to a harmless priest.
Held Europe spell-bound, in war’s thunders heard
A voice that overruled his subtile tricks,
His blunders and his shuffling politics,
His sham democracy, his hard decrees,
His double-dealings and diplomacies.
These brought their sure results,—ambition checked,
A tarnished splendor, and an empire wrecked,
And that distrust through every heart that crept,
At rights withheld and promises unkept;
While downward sank his star, unmourned of all
Who hailed the nation’s rise, the usurper’s fall;
Till death has swept away the last frail chance
That cheered the friends of tyranny in France.