My Verses
A Verse for Napoleon
On a day, year 69, 17 hundred,Was born a petit Corsican, whom the world would dread!20 years later when La Bastille fell,Napoleon's star rose, First Republic served him well!
A general at 24, bless the siege of Toulon,Robespierre’s blessing against the grand coalition;Leading the charge of armée d’Italy,Won Piedmont, Castilloni, and Rivoli!
Austrians did fold, to the Habsburgs he turned;Léoben, Campo Formio, Bavaria burned.Enveloping his enemies in sixty wars,Pristine victories and Europe in scars!
Egypt was next, deprive Brits of trade!Battle of the pyramids and Mamluks dead!Napoleonic ambitions saw a dusk fall on dawn,Trafalgar nemesis, Admiral Nelson!!
Returning to Paris as the first consul,The republic gave France an emperor the rule!From Amiens, Ulm, to Austerlitz,La grandé armée crossed the Rhine in a Blitz!
1808 began the Russian March, Berezina, Borodino, where winters are harsh,In Leipzig cane his next big defeat,Abdicated to Elba, in retreat.
Escape from Elba, did hundred days ensue,Till Napoléon met Wellington at Waterloo!1815 marked his final phase,St Helena is where he spent his last days!
A flawed genius, extraordinaire,Stills Holds his baton high for generals to dare!In Gerone, Le jeune, and Louis David’s paint,Vive la Napoleon, bravery will never taint!
A Verse for Greece
Acropolis, a city high in the sky!Themistocles, Pericles, Solon, Oh my!Phidias’ Athena looked from up high,To see Dionysus romp and Socrates die.
Though the Propylaia you enter the Parthenon,Bracing Athena Polias and Erecthion;Footsteps of history, can words surmise?Here Athens and the horses of Helios rise!
A Delian mark of Democracy.Under Ottoman’s a mosque, theocracy, In 17c, a brutal attack swept,Doric columns blew high, and history wept!
Past Thissio View, Zeus and Pan,We sail goat seas, Isle lost to man!Atlantis sank and a caldera rose,Santorini with her whitewashed pose!
From Minoan to Mycenean isles,Acropolis and Nike from Parian mines;Once Triremes sailed to burn down Troy;Paros, Naxos, Mykonos ahoy!
Agorigitko and Loukomathes,Cheeky ganders, cats, rain hit or miss!In a Fiat forever holding hands,Cheers, two years, crisscrossing lands. Past Delphi, Corinth, and Cape Sounion!My Atlantis reborn with my Papillon!
A Verse to Western Mediterranean
In marseille they wrote lines for La Marseillaise! There we caught the sails to setting rays! Rays to the East to the Genoese coast,Coast on Columbus, a new world toast.
The morning sun rose on Caput mundi,Mundi of Bernini, Raphael, Verdi!Verdi once had sat on Michelangelo’s step,Steps up Peters dôme, to view apostles prep!
Hop skip jump to the Sicilian isles,Isles where Palermo’s opera house smiles;Smiles with a caponata, Nero d’avola, D’avola, d’bene, d’bella figura!
The Maltese cross was too stormy for a call,Call the Templars, the port’s in thrall;Thrall begone, by Corsica we sped,Catalonian coast, Barcelona’s ahead!
Gaudi’s playground, Sagrada familia,Familia, camera clicks, o mia, o mia!Mia and mia papillon on l’as ramblas; Ramblas we left, sail to Marseille, la place.
A comfy train on sncf, oui,Oui from Provence to the laps of Louis! Louis bourbon from versaillais to louvre.L’ouvre turned l’ferme, guillotine got her groove
Les citoyens took the bastille as fires burned;Louis was lost and the bourbons were darned!Darned mobs arose, bloody dusk to dawn,Dawn rose on notre dame and the pantheon!
panthéon is where les tombes of heroes remain,Remain I say, stand in virtue and gain!Gain enlightenment, Voltaire, lies Napoleon by Germain, Germain looks at Concorde, la place terrible enfants!
Les Enfant terrible de la ancien régime, Le Régime est mort, la république reigns supreme!Suprême fell, Napoleon lost by a mile,Though he’d changed the world from Vienna to the Nile!
So there we stood, Papillon and I;Atop Tour Eiffel, for lunch and "I spy;"Past Steel girdles, bateaux and châteaux,She read me Hugo, or did she cite me Cato?
Le procope still holds Buonaparte’s bicorne,Bicorne, Bourdeaux, crepes, grand mariner sizzled on.On route to Café de fleur, en suite and en masse;Masse tourist trap, just give it a pass.
Oui, encore, and we dash to the south,South to Nice, Cote d’azure’s mouth!Mouth of the oft quoted French riviera,Riviera where one goes que sera, sera!
A cinquecento to chateauneuf de grasse!Grassy knolls for les fleurs and perfumes, en face! En face mixing tubes at Gallimard perfumes,Perfumes that test skills and aromatic tunes!
Soon up the cliffs to Villefrance Sur Mer!Mer so blue that skies ever dare!Daring tunnels to Monaco city,Cite sur le mont, just pretty and pithy!
Finalement, à Dakar off to Gourdon heights;Heights of a gritty Roman fort itching for a fight!Fights and flights of vin chaud and crepes,Crept the day for departure preps!