The King’s Bell.
Eben E. Rexford.
“No perfect day has ever come to me,”
An old man said;
“A perfect day for us can never be
Till we are dead.”
The young king heard him, and he turned away
In earnest thought.
Did men ne’er find on earth the perfect day
For which they sought?
A day all free from care?—so running o’er
With life’s delight
That there seemed room or wish for nothing more
From dawn to night?
“It must be that such days have come to man,”
The young king said.
“Go search—find one who found them—if you can!”
Ah, wise gray head!
“I trust that some time such a day will come
To even me,”
The king said. But the old man’s lips were dumb—
A doubter he.
“That you, and those about you all may know
My perfect day,
A bell shall ring out when the sun is low,
And men shall say—
“‘Behold! this day has been unto the king
A day replete
With happiness. It lacked not anything—
A day most sweet!’”
In a high tower, ere night, the passers saw
A mighty bell,
The tidings of a day without a flaw
Some time to tell.
The bell hung silent in its lofty tower,
Days came and went;
Each summer brought its sunshine and its flower,
Its old content;
But not the happy day he hoped to see.
“But soon or late
The day of days,” he said, “will come to me.
I trust—and wait.”
The years, like leaves upon a restless stream,
Were swept away,
And in the king’s dark hair began to gleam
Bright threads of gray.
Men, passing by, looked upward to the bell,
And smiling said,
“Delay not of the happy time to tell
Till we are dead.”
But they grew old and died. And silent still
The great bell hung;
And the good king, bowed down with age, fell ill
His cares among.
At dusk, one day, with dazed brain, from his room
He slowly crept
Up rattling tower-steps, in dust and gloom,
While watchers slept.
Above the city broke the great bell’s voice,
Silent so long.
“Behold the king’s most happy day! Rejoice!”
It told the throng.
Filled with strange awe, the long night passed away.
At morn men said,
“At last the king has found his happy day—
The king is dead!”