James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902.
June 1Louis Napoleon
By Oscar Wilde (18541900)
E
When far away upon a barbarous strand,
In fight unequal, by an obscure hand,
Fell the last scion of thy brood of Kings!
Nor ride in state through Paris in the van
Of thy returning legions, but instead
Thy mother France, free and republican,
The better laurels of a soldier’s crown,
That not dishonoured should thy soul go down
To tell the mighty sire of thy race
And found it sweeter than his honied bees,
And that the giant wave Democracy
Breaks on the shores where Kings lay crouched at ease.