They shut the young king in a castle, the tale saith,
Where never came woman, and never should come,
And sadly he grew up and stored with all wisdom,
Not wishing for aught in his heart that he had not,
Till the time was come round to his twentieth birthday. 
Then many fair gifts brought his people unto him,
Gold and gems, and rich cloths, and rare things and dear-bought,
And a book fairly written brought a wise man among them,
Called the Praising of Prudence; wherein there was painted
The image of Prudence:—­and that, what but a woman,
E’en she forsooth that the painter found fairest;—­
Now surely thou mindest what needs must come after?

MASTER OLIVER

Yea, somewhat indeed I remember the misery
Told in that tale, but all mingled it is
With the manifold trouble that met us full often,
E’en we ourselves.  Of nought else hast thou memory?

KING PHARAMOND

Of many such tales that the Southland folk told us,
Of many a dream by the sunlight and moonlight;
Of music that moved me, of hopes that my heart had;
The high days when my love and I held feast together. 
—­But what land is this, and how came we hither?

MASTER OLIVER

Nay, hast thou no memory of our troubles that were many? 
How thou criedst out for Death and how near Death came to thee? 
How thou needs must dread war, thou the dreadful in battle? 
Of the pest in the place where that tale was told to us;
And how we fled thence o’er the desert of horror? 
How weary we wandered when we came to the mountains,
All dead but one man of those who went with us? 
How we came to the sea of the west, and the city,
Whose Queen would have kept thee her slave and her lover,
And how we escaped by the fair woman’s kindness,
Who loved thee, and cast her life by for thy welfare? 
Of the waste of thy life when we sailed from the Southlands,
And the sea-thieves fell on us and sold us for servants
To that land of hard gems, where thy life’s purchase seemed
Little better than mine, and we found to our sorrow
Whence came the crown’s glitter, thy sign once of glory: 
Then naked a king toiled in sharp rocky crannies,
And thy world’s fear was grown but the task-master’s whip,
And thy world’s hope the dream in the short dead of night? 
And hast thou forgotten how again we fled from it,
And that fight of despair in the boat on the river,
And the sea-strand again and white bellying sails;
And the sore drought and famine that on ship-board fell on us,
Ere the sea was o’erpast, and we came scarcely living
To those keepers of sheep, the poor folk and the kind? 
Dost thou mind not the merchants who brought us thence northward,
And this land that we made in the twilight of dawning? 
And the city herein where all kindness forsook us,
And our bitter bread sought we from house-door to house-door.