LESSON 29
NAPOLEON AT REST

John Pierpont, 1785-1866, was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, and graduated from Yale College in 1804. The next four years he spent as a private tutor in the family of Col. William Allston, of South Carolina. On his return, he studied law in the law school of his native town. He entered upon practice, but soon left the law for mercantile pursuits, in which he was unsuccessful. Having studied theology at Cambridge, in 1819 he was ordained pastor of the Hollis Street Unitarian Church, in Boston, where he continued nearly twenty years. He afterwards preached four years for a church in Troy, New York, and then removed to Medford, Massachusetts. At the age of seventy-six, he became chaplain of a Massachusetts regiment; but, on account of infirmity, war soon obliged to give up the position. Mr. Pierpont published a series of school readers, which enjoyed a well-deserved popularity for many years.

His poetry is smooth, musical, and vigorous. Most of his pieces were written for special occasions.

His falchion flashed along the Nile;

His hosts he led through Alpine snows;

O'er Moscow's towers, that blazed the while,

His eagle flag unrolled, —and froze.

Here sleeps he now, alone! Not one

Of all the kings, whose crowns he gave,

Bends o'er his dust; —nor wife nor son

Has ever seen or sought his grave.

Behind this seagirt rock, the star,

That led him on from crown to crown,

Has sunk; and nations from afar

Gazed as it faded and went down.

High is his couch; —the ocean flood,

Far, far below, by storms is curled;

As round him heaved, while high he stood,

A stormy and unstable world.

Alone he sleeps! The mountain cloud,

That night hangs round him, and the breath

Of morning scatters, is the shroud

That wraps the conqueror's clay in death.

Pause here! The far-off world, at last,

Breathes free; the hand that shook its thrones,

And to the earth its miters cast,

Lies powerless now beneath these stones.

Hark! comes there from the pyramids,

And from Siberian wastes of snow,

And Europe's hills, a voice that bids

The world he awed to mourn him? No:

The only, the perpetual dirge

That's heard there is the sea bird's cry, —

The mournful murmur of the surge, —

The cloud's deep voice, the wind's low sigh.

STUDY GUIDE

A. Vocabulary in Context—Answer the questions related to the vocabulary in the poem.

1. Someone's grave is the place where they are buried in the ground after they die. It says “... nor wife nor son/Has ever seen or sought his grave”. Why didn't Napoleon's family see his grave?

2. Unstable means changing in a negative way. It says when Napoleon was alive, it was“A stormy and unstable world”. Why does it say this?

3. A throne is a kind of chair on which kings and queens sit. In the third stanza, it says this, referring to Napoleon: “... the hand that shook its thrones”. What does this mean?

4. To mourn someone is to be very sad that they died. Do you think people in all countries mourned Napoleon's death? Why or why not?

B. True or False—Write T (true) or F (false). Explain your answers.

[ ] 1. Napoleon was buried on an island.

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[ ] 2. Napoleon is still buried on an island today.

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[ ] 3. People in many different places were happy when Napoleon wasn't a leader anymore.

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[ ] 4. Napoleon tried to become the ruler of Russia.

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[ ] 5. The tone of this poem is happy.

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C. Opposites—Find words in the poem that mean the opposite of words in this exercise.

1. together: a ____

2. drought: f ____

3. valley: m _______

4. powerful: p ________

5. above: b ______

6. shallow: d ___