# Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands 1842/The Return of Napoleon

THE RETURN OF NAPOLEON
FROM ST. HELENA.
Ho! City of the gay!
 Paris! what festal rite
Doth call thy thronging million forth
 All eager for the sight?
Thy soldiers line the streets
 In fixed and stern array,
With buckled helm and bayonet,
 As on the battle-day.
By square, and fountain side,
 Heads in dense masses rise,
And tower, and battlement, and tree,
 Are studded thick with eyes.
Comes there some conqueror home
 In triumph from the fight,
With spoil and captives in his train,
 The trophies of his might?
The "Arc de Triomphe" glows!
 A martial host are nigh,
France pours in long succession forth
 Her pomp of chivalry.
No clarion marks their way,
 No victor trump is blown;
Why march they on so silently,
 Told by their tread alone?
Behold! in glittering show,
 A gorgeous car of state!
The white-plumed steeds, in cloth of gold,
 Bow down beneath its weight;
And the noble war-horse, led
 Caparisoned along,
Seems fiercely for his lord to ask,
 As his red eye scans the throng.
Who rideth on yon car?
 The incense flameth high,—
Comes there some demi-god of old?
 No answer!—No reply!
Who rideth on yon car?—
 No shout his minions raise,
But by a lofty chapel dome
 The muffled hero stays.
A king is standing there,
 And with uncovered head
Receives him in the name of France,
 Receiveth whom?—The dead!
Was he not buried deep
 In island-cavern drear,
Girt by the sounding ocean surge?
 How came that sleeper here?
Was there no rest for him
 Beneath a peaceful pall,
That thus he brake his stony tomb,
 Ere the strong angel's call?
Hark! Hark! the requiem swells,
 A deep, soul-thrilling strain!
An echo, never to be heard
 By mortal ear again.
A requiem for the chief,
 Whose fiat millions slew,
The soaring eagle of the Alps,
 The crushed at Waterloo:—
The banished who returned,
 The dead who rose again,
And rode in his shroud the billows proud,
 To the sunny banks of Seine.
They laid him there in state,
 That warrior strong and bold,
The imperial crown, with jewels bright,
 Upon his ashes cold;
While round those columns proud
 The blazoned banners wave,
That on a hundred fields he won,
 With the heart's-blood of the brave.
And sternly there kept guard
 His veterans scarred and old,
Whose wounds of Lodi's cleaving bridge,
 Or purple Leipsic told.
Yes, there, with arms reversed,
 Slow pacing, night and day,
Close watch beside the coffin kept
 Those veterans grim and gray.
A cloud is on their brow,—
 Is it sorrow for the dead?
Or memory of the fearful strife,
 Where their country's legions fled?
Of Borodino's blood?
 Of Beresina's wail?
The horrors of that dire retreat,
 Which turned old History pale?
A cloud is on their brow,―
 Is it sorrow for the dead?
Or a shuddering at the wintry shaft
 By Russian tempests sped?
Where countless mounds of snow
 Marked the poor conscripts' grave,
And pierced by frost and famine sank
 The bravest of the brave.
A thousand trembling lamps
 The gathered darkness mock,
And velvet drapes his hearse, who died
 On bare Helena's rock;
And from the altar near,
 A never-ceasing hymn
Is lifted by the chanting priests
 Beside the taper dim.
Mysterious One, and proud!
 In the land where shadows reign,
Hast thou met the flocking ghosts of those,
 Who at thy nod were slain?
Oh, when the cry of that spectral host,
 Like a rushing blast shall be,
What will thine answer be to them?
 And what thy God's to thee?
Paris, Tuesday, Dec. 15, 1840
"No clarion marks their way."
The procession through the streets of Paris of 350,000 cavalry and infantry, in all the dazzling pomp of military costume, was an imposing scene. But the ​absence of all martial music, and the rapidity with which they moved, on account of the singular severity of the weather, gave a strange effect to the pageant, like the rushing of some splendid and terrible dream.
"The noble war-horse led
 Caparisoned along."
There was a remarkable absence of enthusiasm on the part of the people, during the progress of Napoleon's funeral procession. No circumstance connected with it awakened more semblance of feeling, than the sight of a majestic war-horse, who without a rider was led on at a slow pace, at some distance behind the car; and no spectator at the moment realized, that he could never have borne to battle the master for whom he seemed to mourn.
""A king is standing there,
 And with uncovered head
Receives him in the name of France."
Those who were present in the Chapel of the Invalids, when Louis Philippe received the remains of the dead, were impressed with his dignity of manner, and the fitness of the few words that marked the occasion. The Prince de Joinville, who had been commissioned ​to bring the bones of Bonaparte from St. Helena, said, "Sire, I present you the ashes of the Emperor." And the king answered, "I receive them in the name of the French people."
"An echo never to be heard
 By mortal ears again."
The music of the grand and elaborate requiem, performed at these obsequies, was immediately destroyed, to preclude its repetition on any other occasion.
"A thousand trembling lamps
 The gathered darkness mock."
The Chapel belonging to the Hotel des Invalides, where the bones of Bonaparte reposed in state for a fortnight, was continually visited by hundreds of thousands with unabated curiosity. It was lighted only by small lamps from above, so arranged as to cast a tremulous ray amid the darkness that reigned around, making day and night the same, and heightening the solemnity of the scene. Magnificent hangings of purple velvet, studded with massy golden bees, were tastefully disposed at the entrance, while the banners of Austerlitz, and many other battles, were ​wreathed around the lofty columns, and shadowed the coffin of him who had won them. Our visit was on the last morning before the interment, when none were admitted but peers, and such as could obtain peers' medals. There in groups might be seen some of the ancient regime, whose memories extended to the times of unbroken royalty, when the blood of sixty kings flowed peacefully in the veins of Louis the Sixteenth. Others there were, whose friends had perished under the guillotine, or in the prisons of the revolution; and others, whose earliest days were embittered by the ambition of the Corsican. Around the coffin, on whose sides the initial N was deeply sunk in gold, incessantly paced with measured tread the scarred and wrinkled soldiers, keeping guard over the garnered ashes of him, who was both their glory and their bane. From an altar in the recess arose the chanted strain of the priests for the dead; but a deeper voice in the heart said, that all the pride of man was dust, and asked what would be the glory of the warrior, when God judgeth the soul.