Which swept from Moscow to the southern seas!
Yet still she rules the pastoral realm of cheese,
Where Parma views the traveller resort
To note the trappings of her mimic court.
But she appears! Verona sees her shorn
Of all her beams-while nations gaze and mourn—
Ere yet her husband's ashes have had time
To chill in their inhospitable clime;
(If e'er those awful ashes can grow cold;-
But no,-their embers soon will burst the mould)
She comes!-the Andromache (but not Racine's,
Nor Homer's)-Lo! on Pyrrhus' arm she leans!
Yes! the right arm, yet red from Waterloo,
Which cut her lord's half-shatter'd sceptre through,
Is offer'd and accepted! Could a slave
Do more? or less?-and he in his new grave!
Her eye, her cheek, betray no inward strife,
And the ex-empress grows as ex a wife!
So much for human ties in royal breasts!
Why spare men's feelings, when their own are jests?
But, tired of foreign follies, I turn home,
And sketch the group-the picture's yet to come.
My muse 'gan weep, but, ere a tear was spilt,
She caught Sir William Curtis in a kilt!
While throng'd the chiefs of every Highland clan
To hail their brother, Vich Ian Alderman!
Guildhall grows Gael, and echoes with Erse roar,
While all the Common Council cry "Claymore!"