Betwixt Two Seas :: :: University of Virginia Library

“I stand the type of God on earth
With crown and sceptre, orb and ring,
His vassal-planets told my birth
After long years of star-gazing;
The land was glad thro' all its girth;
The people cried ‘Long live the King!’

“When liegemen trudge thro' mud and mire
I ride in chariot, prance on steed;
My board is spread at my desire,
I feast when others barely feed,
My palace-hearth glows warm with fire
While poor men crouch in cold and need.

“The very waves dare not withstand
My thrall, but crawl to lap my feet
Who am the lord of sea and sand,
Of fighting-band and sailing-fleet;
There is no lady in the land
Who would not deem my kisses sweet.

“Do I but set my spear in rest,
Or chance to buckle on my mail,
Lo, horsemen spur to East and West
And North and South, to tell the tale,—
My careless word, my thoughtless jest,
Can make men falter and turn pale,

“And when that Pow'r who will not spare
Or King, or Lord, or Commoner,
Shall, haply, smite me, unaware,
Wrapped soft in silk and miniver
The worm will miss his wonted fare
Who brooks not cassia and myrrh.

“My sire, before I saw the light,
To serve Christ's cause, in sorry need,
Set sail with many a gallant knight
For paynim lands, who gain'd for meed
A hero's death in thick of fight,
So was I born a king indeed;

“And well I mind me when I came
Unscathed, from that same Holy War,
And heard my people's loud acclaim
Who throug'd and shouted round my car,
Methought in secret: ‘Small their blame;
‘The King is not as others are!’

“But now I marvel in my heart,
Why men should set me up so high,
And yield me, thus, the better part
Of all they strive for ere they die,
Who see each day at Mass and Mart
An hundred worthier than I;

“And once, ere grown to man's estate,
I, (stretch'd beside the Yule-tide blaze,
When links were burning low and late
After the minstrels ceased their lays,)
Heard, and half heard, the old wives prate
About the things of bygone days;

“How, when the King was at the war,
The Queen, my mother, faring forth,
With one that was mere servitor
And poor Esquire, to all men's wrath
Made over-free, and, furthermore,
Would tryst him in the garden-garth;

“‘Wherefore,’ they said, ‘our King is fair;
(The old King's cheek was sear'd and brown;)
That stripling was a marksman rare,
And lo, his shaft that wears the crown
Can wing the falcon high in air,
And bring the green-neck'd mallard down.’

“And so, some streak of common clay
May fleck my Kinghood after all!
Once, well nigh sick to death, I lay,
And I beheld my first-born fall
Heart-smitten in a border-fray,
And saw the maidens sew his pall.

“I that have but to sign and seal
To doom men to the headsman's shears,
Should I, the Lord's anointed, feel
The sting of pain, the smart of tears?
Be stricken of the foeman's steel
Or know the numbing of the years?

“Am I but as some plant that grows
With whin-bound wattles shelter'd warm,
Which, none the less, is one with those
That brave the blast and breast the storm,
Or hath some graft of bramble-rose
All unsuspected, wrought the harm?

“Yet if, forsooth, the thing be so,
And aught be here to taint or mar,
My liegeman shall but cringe more low,
I'll bear me lordlier by far,
So, by the Rood, no man shall know
The King is but as others are!”