Bonaparte,.... Feelings of a Republican on the Fall of Bonaparte Written on Hearing the News of the Death of Napoleon
republican republic monarchy
Prometheus Unbound Golden Years, p. 236. Shelley s Poetry and Prose, p. 465, n.
Selected Poetry and Prose, pp. 5045 Golden Years, p. 368.
Feelings of a Republican on the Fall of Bonaparte, 1816 old Custom, legal Crime / And bloody Faith the foulest birth of Time Written on Hearing the Death of Napoleon Napoleon's fierce spirit rolled / In terror and blood and gold T. J. Hogg Avelingpp..
The Triumph of Life, the Child of a fierce hour Feelings of a Republican on the Fall of Bonaparte I HATED thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan To think that a most unambitiousslave, 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. From Shelley: Poetical Works, pp. Lord Castlereagh 17691822 Peter Bell the Third The Mask of Anarchy Letters, I, pp. 3456.
Written on Hearing the News of the Death of Napoleon 14 What! alive and so bold, oh Earth? Art thounot overbold? What! leapestthou forth as of old In the light of thy morning mirth, The last of the flock of the starry fold? Ha! leapest thou forth as of old? Are not the limbs still when the ghost is fled, And canst thou move, Napoleon being dead? Shelley s Poetry and Prose, 465
How! is not thy quick heart cold? What spark is alive on thy hearth? How! is not his death-knell knolled? And livest thou still, Mother Earth? Thou wert warming thy fingers old O er theembers covered and cold Of that most fiery spirit, when it fled What, Mother, do you laugh now he is dead? Who has known me of old, replied Earth, Or who has my story told? It is thou who art overbold. And the lightning of scorn laughed forth As she sung, To my bosom I fold All my sons when their knell is knolled And so with living motion all are fed And the quick spring like weeds out of the dead. Still alive and still bold, shouted Earth, I grow bolder and still more bold. The dead fill me ten thousand fold Fuller of speed and splendour and mirth. I was cloudy, and sullen, and cold, Like a frozen chaos uprolled Till by the spirit of the mighty dead My heart grew warm. I feed on whom I fed. Aye, alive and still bold, muttered Earth, Napoleon s fierce spirit rolled In terror, and blood, and gold, A torrent of ruin to death from his birth. Leave the millions who follow to mould The metal before it be cold, And weave into his shame, which like the dead Tellus Vesta
Shrouds me, the hopes that from his glory fled. From Shelley s Poetry and Prose, pp.
Percy Bysshe Shelley: Selected Poetry and Prose. Ed. Kenneth Neill Cameron. Holt, Rinehart and Winston Inc., 1951. Shelley: Poetical Works. Ed. Thomas Hutchinson, corrected by G. M. Matthews. Oxford University Press, 1970. The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ed. Frederick L. Jones. 2 vols. Oxford University Press, 1964. Shelley s Poetry and Prose. Eds. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat. Norton Critical Edition. 2nd edition. New York: Norton, 2002. Aveling, Edward, and Eleanor Marx Aveling. Shelley and Socialism, From The Shelley Society s Papers. AMS Press, New York,. Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Shelley: The Golden Years. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974.