Читать книгу Poems of To-Day: an Anthology - Various - Страница 10

  Sombre and rich, the skies;

  Great glooms, and starry plains.

  Gently the night wind sighs;

  Else a vast silence reigns.

  The splendid silence clings

  Around me: and around

  The saddest of all kings

  Crowned, and again discrowned.

  Comely and calm, he rides

  Hard by his own Whitehall:

  Only the night wind glides:

  No crowds, nor rebels, brawl.

  Gone, too, his Court; and yet,

  The stars his courtiers are:

  Stars in their stations set;

  And every wandering star.

  Alone he rides, alone,

  The fair and fatal king:

  Dark night is all his own,

  That strange and solemn thing.

  Which are more full of fate:

  The stars; or those sad eyes?

  Which are more still and great:

  Those brows; or the dark skies?

  Although his whole heart yearn

  In passionate tragedy:

  Never was face so stern

  With sweet austerity.

  Vanquished in life, his death

  By beauty made amends:

  The passing of his breath

  Won his defeated ends.

  Brief life and hapless? Nay:

  Through death, life grew sublime.

  Speak after sentence? Yea:

  And to the end of time.

  Armoured he rides, his head

  Bare to the stars of doom:

  He triumphs now, the dead,

  Beholding London's gloom.

  Our wearier spirit faints,

  Vexed in the world's employ:

  His soul was of the saints;

  And art to him was joy.

  King, tried in fires of woe!

  Men hunger for thy grace:

  And through the night I go,

  Loving thy mournful face.

  Yet when the city sleeps;

  When all the cries are still:

  The stars and heavenly deeps

  Work out a perfect will.