Ex-Member of the National Convention.

The pass is barred! " Fall back! " cries the guard; " cross not the French frontier! "
As with solemn tread, of the exiled dead the funeral drew near.
For the sentinelle hath noticed well what no plume, no pall can hide,
That yon hearse contains the sad remains of a banished regicide!
" But pity take, for his glory's sake, " said his children to the guard;
" Let his noble art plead on his part — let a grave be his reward!
France knew his name in her hour of fame, nor the aid of his pencil scorned;
Let his passport be the memory of the triumphs he adorned! "

" That corpse can't pass! 'tis my duty, alas! " said the frontier sentinelle. —
" But pity take, for his country's sake, and his clay do not repel
From its kindred earth, from the land of his birth! " cried the mourners, in their turn.
" Oh! give to France the inheritance of her painter's funeral urn:
His pencil traced, on the Alpine waste of the pathless Mont Bernard,
Napoleon's course on the snow-white horse! — let a grave be his reward!
For he loved this land — ay, his dying hand to paint her fame he'd lend her:
Let his passport be the memory of his native country's splendour! "

" Ye cannot pass, " said the guard, " alas! (for tears bedimmed his eyes)
Though France may count to pass that mount a glorious enterprise. " —
" Then pity take, for fair Freedom's sake, " cried the mourners once again:
" Her favourite was Leonidas, with his band of Spartan men;
Did not his art to them impart life's breath, that France might see
What a patriot few in the gap could do at old Thermopylae?
Oft by that sight for the coming fight was the youthful bosom fired:
Let his passport be the memory of the valour he inspired! "

" Ye cannot pass. " — " Soldier, alas! a dismal boon we crave —
Say, is there not some lonely spot where his friends may dig a grave?
Oh! pity take, for that hero's sake whom he gloried to portray
With crown and palm at Notre Dame on his coronation-day. "
Amid that band the withered hand of an aged pontiff rose,
And blessing shed on the conqueror's head, forgiving his own woes: —
He drew that scene — nor dreamt, I ween, that yet a little while,
And the hero's doom would be a tomb far off in a lonely isle!

" I am charged, alas! not to let you pass, " said the sorrowing sentinede;
" His destiny must also be a foreign grave! " — " 'Tis well! —
Hard is our fate to supplicate for his bones a place of rest,
And to bear away his banished clay from the land that he loved best.
But let us hence! — Sad recompense for the lustre that he cast,
Blending the rays of modern days with the glories of the past!
Our sons will read with shame this deed (unless my mind doth err);
And a future age make pilgrimage to the painter's sepulchre! "