A King lived long ago,
    In the morning of the world,
    When earth was nigher heaven than now: 
    And the King’s locks curled,
    Disparting o’er a forehead full
    As the milk-white space ’twixt horn and horn
    Of some sacrificial bull—­
    Only calm as a babe new-born: 
    For he was got to a sleepy mood,
    So safe from all decrepitude,
    Age with its bane, so sure gone by,
    (The gods so loved him while he dreamed)
    That, having lived thus long, there seemed
    No need the King should ever die.

    LUIGI.  No need that sort of King should ever die!

    Among the rocks his city was: 
    Before his palace, in the sun,
    He sat to see his people pass,
    And judge them every one
    From its threshold of smooth stone
    They haled him many a valley-thief
    Caught in the sheep-pens, robber chief
    Swarthy and shameless, beggar, cheat,
    Spy-prowler, or rough pirate found
    On the sea-sand left aground;

* * *

These, all and every one,
The King judged, sitting in the sun.

LUIGI.  That King should still judge sitting in the sun!

His councillors, on left and right,
Looked anxious up,—­but no surprise
Disturbed the King’s old smiling eyes
Where the very blue had turned to white. 
’Tis said, a Python scared one day
The breathless city, till he came,
With forty tongue and eyes on flame,
Where the old King sat to judge alway;
But when he saw the sweepy hair
Girt with a crown of berries rare
Which the god will hardly give to wear
To the maiden who singeth, dancing bare
In the altar-smoke by the pine-torch lights,
At his wondrous forest rites,—­
Seeing this, he did not dare
Approach the threshold in the sun,
Assault the old king smiling there. 
Such grace had kings when the world begun!

Then there are two other romantic pieces, not ringing with this early note, but having in them a wafting scent of the Provencal spirit.  One is the song sung by Pippa when she passes the room where Jules and Phene are talking—­the song of Kate, the Queen.  The other is the cry Rudel, the great troubadour, sent out of his heart to the Lady of Tripoli whom he never saw, but loved.  The subject is romantic, but that, I think, is all the romance in it.  It is not Rudel who speaks but Browning.  It is not the twelfth but the nineteenth century which has made all that analysis and over-worked illustration.