Thus I entered, and thus I go!
In triumphs, people have dropped down dead.
“Paid by the world, what dost thou owe
Me?”—God might question; now instead,
’Tis God shall repay: I am safer so.
The Patriot, on his way to the scaffold, surrounded by a hooting crowd,
remembers how, just a year ago, the same people had been mad in their
enthusiasm for him. Anything at all, however extravagant, would have
been too little for them to do for him (stanza 2; cf. Gal. iv. 15, 16);
but now——! The fourth stanza is very powerful. All have gone who can, to
be ready to see the execution; only the “palsied few,” who cannot, are
at the windows to see him pass. In the last stanza the thought of a more
sudden contrast still is presented. A man may drop dead in the midst of
a triumph, to find that in its brief plaudits he has his reward, while a
vast account stands against him at the higher tribunal. Far better die
amid the execrations of men and find the contrast reversed.
It is “an old story,” and therefore general; but one naturally thinks of
such cases as Arnold of Brescia, or the tribune Rienzi. A higher Name
than these need not be introduced here, in proof of the people’s
fickleness!
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