Page:Voltaire (Hamley).djvu/69

 the Sorbonne by instigating the fanatical monk, Jacques Clement, to get out of Paris and murder the king. In the fifth canto is described how Discord summons, from the infernal abodes, the demon of fanaticism, who conducts the monk to his victim. The poet describes the last moments of the king, at which Bourbon, his successor, was present—

Already Valois touched on his last hour,

His eyes perceiving but a fading light;

Around him, weeping, stood his courtiers ranged,

Parted in secret by divergent aims,

But pouring in one common voice their grief.

Some, trusting in the good a change might bring,

Mourned faintly for their dying monarch's fate;

Others, enfolded in their selfish fears,

The loss of fortune, not of sovereign, wept.

Amid this clamorous hubbub of complaint

'Twas Bourbon who alone shed genuine tears;

Valois had been his enemy, but souls

Like his at such a time their wrongs forget

Nought but old friendship weighed with Henry then;

In vain his interests 'gainst his pity strove,

The honest hero’s thoughts were far away

From what the king's death gave—a kingly crown.

By a last effort Valois turned on him

The heavy eyes which death was soon to close

Placing his hand on those victorious hands,

'Ah, leave,' he cried, 'those generous tears unshed!

The outraged universe should mourn your king,

But you must fight, my Bourbon, reign, avenge.

I die and leave you in the midst of storms,

Cast on a strand all covered with my wreck.

My throne awaits you, yours my throne should be—

Enjoy the prize your arm has guarded well;

But think how ceaseless storms environ it,

And fear the Giver as you mount the seat.