When power is filched by drone and dolt,
  And, with canght breath and flashing eye,
Her knuckles whitening round the bolt,
  Vengeance leans eager from the sky,
While this and that the people guess,
  And to the skirts of praters cling, 30
Who court the crowd they should compress,
  I turn in scorn to seek my king.

Shut in what tower of darkling chance
  Or dungeon of a narrow doom,
Dream’st thou of battle-axe and lance
  That for the Cross make crashing room? 
Come! with hushed breath the battle waits
  In the wild van thy mace’s swing;
While doubters parley with their fates,
  Make thou thine own and ours, my king! 40

O strong to keep upright the old,
  And wise to buttress with the new,
Prudent, as only are the bold,
  Clear-eyed, as only are the true,
To foes benign, to friendship stern,
  Intent to imp Law’s broken wing,
Who would not die, if death might earn
  The right to kiss thy hand, my king?

SCENE II.—­An Inn near the Chateau of Chalus.

Well, the whole thing is over, and here I sit
  With one arm in a sling and a milk-score of gashes, 50
And this flagon of Cyprus must e’en warm my wit,
  Since what’s left of youth’s flame is a head flecked with ashes. 
I remember I sat in this very same inn,—­
  I was young then, and one young man thought I was handsome,—­
I had found out what prison King Richard was in,
  And was spurring for England to push on the ransom.

How I scorned the dull souls that sat guzzling around
  And knew not my secret nor recked my derision! 
Let the world sink or swim, John or Richard be crowned,
  All one, so the beer-tax got lenient revision. 60
How little I dreamed, as I tramped up and down,
  That granting our wish one of Fate’s saddest Jokes is! 
I had mine with a vengeance,—­my king got his crown,
  And made his whole business to break other folks’s.

I might as well join in the safe old tum, tum: 
  A hero’s an excellent loadstar,—­but, bless ye,
What infinite odds ’twixt a hero to come
  And your only too palpable hero in esse!
Precisely the odds (such examples are rife)
  ’Twixt the poem conceived and the rhyme we make show of, 70
’Twixt the boy’s morning dream and the wake-up of life,
  ’Twixt the Blondel God meant and a Blondel I know of!

But the world’s better off, I’m convinced of it now,
  Than if heroes, like buns, could be bought for a penny
To regard all mankind as their haltered milch-cow,
  And just care for themselves.  Well, God cares for the many;
For somehow the poor old Earth blunders along,
  Each son of hers adding his mite of unfitness,
And, choosing the sure way of coming out wrong,
  Gets to port as the next generation will witness. 80