The Poetical Works of John Payne :: :: University of Virginia Library

‘BURY me deep,’ said the king,
‘Deep in the mountain's womb;
For I am weary of strife.
Hollow me out a tomb,
So that the golden sun
Pierce not the blackness dun
Where I shall lie and sleep;
Lest haply the light should bring
Again the stirring of life,
Or ever the time be come
To waken. Bury me deep.

‘Let not the silver moon
Search out the graven stone
That lieth above my head,
In the tomb where I sleep alone,
Nor any ray of a star
Come in the night to unbar
The gates of my prison-sleep.
I shall awake too soon
From the quiet sleep of the dead,
When the trumps of the Lord are blown.
If you love me, bury me deep.

‘I feel in my heart of hearts
There cometh a time for me,
Far in the future's gloom,
When there no more may be
Rest for my weary head,
When over my stony bed
The wind of the Lord shall sweep
And scatter the tomb in parts
And the voice of the angel of doom
Shall thrill through and waken me
Out of my stirless sleep.

‘For a king that has been a king,
That has loved the people he swayed,
Has bound not his brows in vain
With the gold and the jewelled braid;
Has held not in his right hand
The symbol that rules the land,
The sceptre of God for nought.
He may not escape the thing
He compassed: in death again
His sleep is troubled and weighed
By wraiths of the deeds he wrought.

‘And if he has evil done,
There may he lie and rest
Under the storied stone,
Slumber, uneasy, opprest
By the ghosts of his evil deeds,
Till Death with his pallid steeds
Have smitten the world with doom:
And the moon and the stars and the sun
Will leave him to sleep alone,
Fearing to shine on him, lest
The wicked arise from the tomb!

‘But if the ruler be wise,
Have wrought for his people's good

Sadly and like a god;
Whenever the plague-mists brood
Over the kingless land,
When fire and famine and brand
Are loose and the people weep,
They cry to the king to rise;
And under the down-pressed sod,
He hears their pitiful cries
And stirs in his dreamful sleep.

‘And the sun and the stars and the moon
Look down through the creviced tomb
And rend with their arrows of light
The sepulchre's friendly gloom,
Stirring the life again
In pulse and muscle and vein;
And the winds, that murmur and sweep
Over his resting-place, croon
And wail in his ear: “The night
Is past and the day is come;
O king, arise from thy sleep!”

The sleeper murmurs and sighs,—
Rest is so short and sweet,
Life is so long and sad,—
And he throws off his winding-sheet:
The gates of the tomb unclose
And out in the world he goes,
Weary and careful, to reap
The harvest, on hero-wise
To garner the good, and the bad
To burn, ere the Ruler shall mete
Him yet a portion of sleep.

‘Great is the Master of Life
And I bow my head to His will!
When He needs me, the Lord will call
And I shall arise and fill

The span of duty once more.
But now I am weary and sore
With travail and need of sleep;
And I fear lest the clangour and strife
Upon me again should fall,
Ere sleep shall have healed my ill.
I pray you, bury me deep!’

So the good king was dead
And the people wrought him a grave
Deep in the mountain's womb,
In a place where the night-winds rave
And the centuries come and go,
Unheard of the dead below;
Where never a ray might creep;
In the rocks where the rubies red
And the diamonds grow in the gloom,
They hollowed the king a tomb,
Low and vaulted and deep.

And there they brought him to lie:
With wailing and many a tear,
The people bore to the place
The good king's corpse on the bier.
They perfumed his funeral glooms
With lily and amaranth blooms,
In a silence sweet and deep;
They piled up the rocks on high
And there, with a smile on his face,
In doubt and sadness and fear,
They left the monarch to sleep.

Onward the centuries rolled
And the king slept safely and sound
In the heart of the faithful earth,
In the still death-slumbers bound:
And the sun and the moon and the stars
Looked wistfully down on the bars

Of the sepulchre quiet and deep,
Where he lay, while the world grew old
And death succeeded to birth,
And heard not an earthly sound
And saw not a sight in his sleep.

And it came to pass that the Wind
Spake once and said to the Sun:
‘O giver of summer-life!
Is not the time fordone
And the measure of God fulfilled,
Wherein He, the Lord, hath willed
The king should arise from sleep?
I go in the night and I find
The folk are weary of strife,
And joyless is every one
And many an eye doth weep!’

But the Sun said, shaking his hair,
His glorious tresses of gold:
“Brother, the grave is deep;
And the rocks so closely do fold
The king, that we may not win
A place where to enter in
And trouble his slumber deep.”
And the Wind said: “Where I fare,
The rays of the sun can creep,
Through the thin worm-holes in the mould,
And rouse the king from his sleep!”

Then the Moon and the Stars and the Sun
Arose and shone on the grave,
And it was as the Wind had said:
Yea, up from the vaulted cave
The worms had crept in the night
And opened a way for the light
And the winds of the air to creep.
And they entered, one by one;

Yea, down to the house of the dead,
Through cranny and rock they clave,
To wake the king from his sleep.

And the king turned round in his dream,
As he felt the terrible rays
Creeping down through the mould
In the track of the false worms' ways;
And he quaked as the light drew near
And he called to the earth for fear,
To aid him his rest to keep;
For the time he had slept did seem
But an hour, nor the wheels of gold
Had circled the span of days
When he should arise from sleep.

But the mother all-faithful heard
The dreaming call of the king,
And she seized on the wandering rays
And of each one she made a thing
Of jewelries, such as grow
In the dim earth-caves below,
From the light kept long and deep;
For she loved the man and she feared
Lest the fateful glitter and blaze
Of the light too early should bring
The dead from his goodly sleep.

She moulded pearls of the moon
And diamonds of the sun;
Rubies and sapphires she made
Of the star-rays, every one.
There was never an one might 'scape
Some luminous jewel-shape
Of all the rays that did creep
Down through the earth, too soon
To rend the sepulchre's shade;

But she seized on them all, and none
Might trouble the dead man's sleep.

Then did she mould him a crown
Of silver and cymophane
And in it the gems she set,
For a sign that never again,
Till God should beckon to him,
On the silence quiet and dim
Of the sepulchre low and deep
Should the rays of the stars look down
To trouble his rest. And yet
The centuries wax and wane
And the king is still in his sleep.