Written In The Nouveaux Interests Des Princes De L'Europe

Whate'er thy countrymen have done
By law and wit, by sword and gun,
In thee is faithfully recited,
And all the living world that view
Thy work, give thee the praises due
At once instructed and delighted.

Yet for the fame of all these deeds
What beggar in the invalids,
With lameness broke, with blindness smitten,
Wish'd ever decently to die,
To have been either Mezeray,
Or any Monarch he has written?

It's strange, dear Author, yet it true is,
That down from Pharamond to Louis
All covet life, yet call it pain,
And feel the ill, yet shun the cure:
Can sense this paradox endure?
Resolve me, Cambray, or Fontaine.

The man in graver tragic known
(Though his best part long since was done)
Still on the stage desires to tarry,
...

Honour, I say, or honest Fame,
I mean the substance, not the name;
(Not that light heap of tawdry wares,
Ermin, Coronets, and Stars,
Which often is by merit sought,
By gold and flatt'ry oft'ner bought.
The shade, for which Ambition looks,
In Selden's or in Ashmole's books):
But the true glory which proceeds,
Reflected bright from honest deeds,
Which we in our Own breast perceive,
And Kings can neither take nor give.

Dictate, O mighty judge, what thou hast seen
Of cities and of courts, of books and men,
And deign to let thy servant hold the pen.

Through ages, thus, I may presume to live,
And from the transcript of thy prose receive
What my own short-lived verse can never give.

Thus shall fair Britain, with a gracious smile,
Accept the work, and the instructed isle
For more than treaties made shall bless my toil.

Nor longer hence the Gallic style preferr'd,
Wisdom in English idiom shall be heard,
While Talbot tells the world where Montaigne err'd.

Nobles and Heralds, by your leave,
Here lies what once was Matthew Prior,
The son of Adam and of Eve;
Can Stuart or Nassau claim higher.

Nobles and Heralds, by your leave!
Here lie the bones of Matthew Prior;
A son of Adam and Eve:
Let Bourbon or Nassau go higher.

("Qui leur eût dit l'austère destineé?")

[II. v., November, 1836.]


Who then, to them[1] had told the Future's story?
Or said that France, low bowed before their glory,
One day would mindful be
Of them and of their mournful fate no more,

Than of the wrecks its waters have swept o'er
The unremembering sea?

That their old Tuileries should see the fall
Of blazons from its high heraldic hall,
Dismantled, crumbling, prone;[2]
Or that, o'er yon dark Louvre's architrave[3]
A Corsican, as yet unborn, should grave
An eagle, then unknown?

That gay St. Cloud another lord awaited,
Or that in scenes Le Nôtre's art created
For princely sport and ease,
Crimean steeds, trampling the velvet ...