“Then swear it,” he said, “and your king uncrown.”
He drew her forth in her long white gown,
And she knelt and swore.
“Good. Now you may go and again lie down
“Since you’ve played these pranks and given no sign,
You shall crave this man of yours; pine and pine
With sighings sore,
’Till I’ve starved your love for him; nailed you mine.
“I’m a practical man, and want no tears;
You’ve made a fool of me, it appears;
That you don’t again
Is a lesson I’ll teach you in future years.”
She answered not, but lay listlessly
With her dark dry eyes on the coppery sea,
That now and then
Flung its lazy flounce at the neighbouring quay.
1910.
A KING’S SOLILOQUY
ON THE NIGHT OF HIS FUNERAL
From the slow march and muffled drum
And crowds distrest,
And book and bell, at length I have come
To my full rest.
A ten years’ rule beneath the sun
Is wound up here,
And what I have done, what left undone,
Figures out clear.
Yet in the estimate of such
It grieves me more
That I by some was loved so much
Than that I bore,
From others, judgment of that hue
Which over-hope
Breeds from a theoretic view
Of regal scope.