BY THE STATUE OF KING CHARLES AT CHARING CROSS
by: Lionel Johnson (1867-1902)
- OMBRE 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 hahpless? 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.
"By the Statue of King Charles at Charing Cross" is reprinted from Poems of Today. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd., 1921. |
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