Lyrics : Lord Byron
Music : Arnold Schönberg
‘Tis done. But yesterday a king.
And armed with a king to strive
And now thou art a nameless thing.
So abject yet alive.
Is this the man of thousand thrones
Who strewed our earth with hostile bones
And can he thus survive?
Since he miscalled the morning star
Nor man nor fiend hath fallen so far.
Ill minded man, why scourge thy kind
Who bowed so low the knee?
By gazing on thyself grown blind
Thou taught the rest to see.
With might unquestioned, power to save
Thine only gift hath been the grave
To those that worshipped thee.
Nor till thy fall could mortals guess
Ambitions less than littleness.
Thanks for that lesson, it will teach
To after warriors more
than high Philosophy can preach
And vainly preached before.
That spell upon the minds of men
breaks never to unite again
That let them to adore
Those pagoda things of sabres sway
With fronts of brass, and feet of clay.
Triumph and the vanity,
The rupture of the strife,
The earthquake voice of victory
To thee the breath of life.
The sword, the scepter, and that sway
Which man seemed made but to obey
Where with renown was to rife.
All quelled. Dark spirit, what must be the madness
Of thy memory, the desolater, desolate.
The victor overthrown,
The arbiter of others fate,
A suppliant for his own.
Is it some yet imperial hope
That with such change can calmly cope,
Or dread of death alone,
To die a prince or live a slave,
Thy choice is most ignobly brave.
He who of old would rend the oak
Dreamed not of the rebound
Chained by the trunk he vainly broke
Alone how looked he round?
Thou in the sternness of thy strength
An equal deed hast done at length
And darker fate hast found
He fell, the forest prowlers pray
But thou must eat thy heart away!
The Roman, when his burning heart
Was slaked with blood of Rome
Threw down the dagger dared depart
In savage grandeur, home.
He dared depart in utter scorn
Of men, that such a yoke had born
Yet left him such a doom.
His only glory was that hour
Of self upheld abandoned power,
The Spaniard, when the lust of sway
Has lost its quickening spell
Cast crowns for rosaries away
An empire for a cell,
A strict accountant of his beads
A subtle disputant on creeds
His dotage trifled well
Yet better had he neither known
a bigot’s shrine, Nor despots throne.
But thou, from thy reluctant hand
The thunderbolt is wrung
To late thou leave the high command
To which thy weakness clung
All evil spirit as thou art
It is enough to grieve the heart
To see thine own unstrung
To think that god’s fair world hath been
the foot stool of a thing so mean.
And earth hath spilt her blood for him
Who thus can hoard his own.
And monarchs bowed the trembling limb
And thanked him for a throne.
Fair freedom, we may hold thee dear
When thus thy mightiest foes
Their fear in humblest guise has shown.
Oh, never may tyrant leave behind
A brighter name to lure mankind.
Thy evil deeds are writ in gore
Not written thus in vain
Thy triumph tell of fame no more
Or deepen every stain
If thou hadst died as honor dies
Some new napoleon might arise
To shame the world again.
But who would soar the solar height
To set in such a starless night?
Weighed in the balance, hero dust
Is vile as vulgar clay
Thy scales mortality are just
To all that pass away.
But yet me thought the living great
Some higher sparks should animate
To dazzle and dismay.
Nor deemed contempt could thus
Make mirth of these
The conquerors of the earth
And she proud Austria’s mournful flower
Thy still imperial bride
Now bears her breast the torturing hour
Still clings she to thy side?
Must she too bend, must she too share
Thy late repentance long despair
Thou throne less homicide
If still she loves thee, hoard that gem
‘Tis worth thy vanished diadem
Then haste thee to thy sullen isle
And gaze up on the sea
That element may meet thy smile
It never was ruled by thee.
Or trace with thine all idle hand
In loitering mood upon the sand
That earth is now as free.
That Corinth pedagogue hath now
Transferred his by word to thy brow
Thou Timour in his captive cage
What thoughts will there be thine
While brooding in thy prisoned rage
But one “The world was mine”
Unless like he of Babylon
All sense is with thy scepter gone
Life will not long confine
That spirit poured so widely forth
So long obeyed so little worth
Or like the thief of fire from heaven
Wilt thou withstand the shock
And share with him the unforgiven
His vulture and his rock
Foredoomed by god by man accurst
And that last act, though not thy worst
The very Fiends arch mock
He in his fall preserved his pride
And if a mortal had as proudly died
There was a day, there was an hour
While earth was Gaul’s, Gaul thine
when what immeasurable power
Unstated to resign
had been an act of purer fame than gathers
Round Marengo’s name and gilded thy decline
Throughout the long twilight of all time
Despite some passing clouds of crime
But thou for sooth, must be a king
And don the purple vest as if that foolish
Robe could wring remembrance from
Thy breast, where is that faded garment
Where the gewgaws thou were fond to wear
The star, the string the crest?
Vain froward child of empire
Say are all thy playthings snatched away
Where may the wearied eye repose
When gazing on the great
Where neither guilty glory glows
Nor despicable state
Yes, one the first the last the best
The Cincinnatus of the west
Whom envy dared not hate
Bequeathed the name of Washington
To make man blush
There was but one!