BEN ALI.
"Is it not written: 'When the truth is known,
Then only the king's mercy is his own'?
If then the king his servant will forgive
For rendering back the king's prerogative,
Forgive the misshaped mouth ill made to lie,
Forgive the straitened walk, the single eye,
Forgive the holy dead for truth who died,
And those who thought their deaths were sanctified;
With such forgiveness let me then go hence,
And, in some desert place of penitence
And meditation, read it in the dust,
If He who sends His rain upon the just,
And sends His rain upon the unjust too,
Is mercifully false, or merely true."