Uprose the king, and from his head
    Shook off the crown and threw it by. 
  “O man, thou must have known,” he said,
    “A greater king than I.”

  Through all the gates, unquestioned then,
    Went king and beggar hand in hand. 
  Whispered the king, “Shall I know when
    Before his throne I stand?”

  The beggar laughed.  Free winds in haste
    Were wiping from the king’s hot brow
  The crimson lines the crown had traced. 
    “This is his presence now.”

  At the king’s gate the crafty noon
    Unwove its yellow nets of sun;
  Out of their sleep in terror soon
    The guards waked one by one.

  “Ho here!  Ho there!  Has no man seen
    The king?” The cry ran to and fro;
  Beggar and king, they laughed, I ween,
    The laugh that free men know.

  On the king’s gate the moss grew gray;
    The king came not.  They called him dead;
  And made his eldest son one day
    Slave in his father’s stead.

H.H.  JACKSON.

On a Bust of Dante.

  See, from this counterfeit of him
    Whom Arno shall remember long,
  How stern of lineament, how grim,
    The father was of Tuscan song: 
  There but the burning sense of wrong,
    Perpetual care and scorn, abide;
  Small friendship for the lordly throng;
    Distrust of all the world beside.

  Faithful if this wan image be,
    No dream his life was,—­but a fight;
  Could any Beatrice see
    A lover in that anchorite? 
  To that cold Ghibelline’s gloomy sight
    Who could have guessed the visions came
  Of Beauty, veiled with heavenly light,
    In circles of eternal flame?

  The lips as Cumae’s cavern close,
    The cheeks with fast and sorrow thin,
  The rigid front, almost morose,
    But for the patient hope within,
  Declare a life whose course hath been
    Unsullied still, though still severe;
  Which, through the wavering days of sin,
    Kept itself icy-chaste and clear.

  Not wholly such his haggard look
    When wandering once, forlorn, he strayed,
  With no companion save his book,
    To Corvo’s hushed monastic shade;
  Where, as the Benedictine laid
    His palm upon the convent’s guest,
  The single boon for which he prayed
    Was peace, that pilgrim’s one request.

  Peace dwells not here,—­this rugged face
    Betrays no spirit of repose;
  The sullen warrior sole we trace,
    The marble man of many woes. 
  Such was his mien when first arose
    The thought of that strange tale divine,
  When hell he peopled with his foes,
    The scourge of many a guilty line.

  War to the last he waged with all
    The tyrant canker-worms of earth;
  Baron and duke, in hold and hall,
    Cursed the dark hour that gave him birth;
  He used Rome’s harlot for his mirth;
    Plucked bare hypocrisy and crime;
  But valiant souls of knightly worth
    Transmitted to the rolls of Time.