Panama and Other Poems Narrative and Occasional :: :: University of Virginia Library

See on the heath the dispossessed old King!
Whom splendour had made narrow; now made grand
By pelting storm and furious rain and wind.
Now all the littleness is out of him;
And in the soil he is at last himself
Yet vaster; for in rags and misery,
And wandering half in madness to and fro,
He had achieved through woe a deeper sight.
The pealing heavens pronounce the human doom,
And lightning sears his spirit with insight.
Now naked to his eyes humanity
Is bared; the hypocrite he scorches up,
The prosperous liar sentences; the thief
Perchance he pities driven to his theft.
Before him all authority disrobed
Passes; the tinsel and the show of earth
He dashes to the ground, and hollow ring

Crowns and the pilèd gold and treasure heaped.
And yet more hollow reputations ring,
Honour and glory that but seem awhile.
The very heavens make tumult for his sake
To show him man and woman guilty-stark;
Ah, what a judge of such a sight possessed,
Come at alone by wretchedness and rags!
Must we who never reigned, nor wore a crown,
We common men be doomed unto the heath
Ere we discern the shows and lies of life?
And must some persecution of the skies
Purge us that we at last may see indeed?
Or deeper tribulation of the soul?