King Alfred's Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Hear now a spell of the proud overbearing
Kings of the earth, when unrighteous in mind:
Wondrously bright tho' the weeds they are wearing,
High tho' the seats where their pomp is enshrin'd,

Goldclad and gemm'd and with hundreds roundstanding
Thanes and great earls with their chain and their sword
All of them chieftains in battle commanding,
Each in his rank doing suit to his lord:

While in such splendour each rules like a savage,
Every where threatning the people with strife,
So, this lord heeds not, but leaves them to ravage
Friends for their riches and foes for their life!

Ay, and himself, like a hound that is madden'd,
Flies at and tears his poor people for sport,
In his fierce mind too loftily gladden'd
With the proud power his chieftains support.

But, from his robes if a man should unwind him,
Stripp'd of such coverings kingly and gay,
Drive all his following thanes from behind him,
And let his glory be taken away;
Then should ye see that he likens most truly
Any of these who so slavishly throng
Round him with homage demurely and duly,
Neither more right than the rest, nor more wrong.

If then to him it should chance in an hour
All his bright weeds from his back be offstripped,
All that we speak of, his pomp and his power,
Glories unravell'd and garments unripp'd,—
If these were shredded away, I am thinking,
That it would seem to him surely as though
He to a prison had crept, and was linking
All that he had to the fetters of woe.

Rightly I reckon that measureless pleasure
Eating and drinking and sweetmeats and clothes,
Breed the mad waxing of lust by bad leisure
Wrecking the mind where such wickedness grows:
Thence cometh evil, and proud overbearing;
Quarrels and troubles arise from such sin,
When in the breast hotheartness is tearing
With its fierce lashes the soul that's within.

Afterward, sorrow imprisons and chains him;
Then does he hope, but his hope is a lie:
Then again, wrath against somebody pains him,
Till he has recklessly doom'd him to die.
In this same book before I was speaking,
Everything living is wishing some good
But the bad kings of the earth, who are wreaking
Nothing but ill, as is fitting they should.

That is no wonder, for slaves very willing
Are they to sins,—as I told thee before,—
And to those lords whose chains they are filling
Straitly and strictly must bend evermore:
This is yet worse, they will not be winning
Standing-room even against such ill might;
Still, if they will, they struggle unsinning,
Tho' they should seem overthrown in the fight.