Oh, 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,
    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. 
    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,
    ’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;
    And 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.

    You think her old ribs have come all crashing through,
      If a whisk of Fate’s broom snap your cobweb asunder;
    But her rivets were clinched by a wiser than you,
      And our sins cannot push the Lord’s right hand from under. 
    Better one honest man who can wait for God’s mind,
      In our poor shifting scene here, though heroes were plenty! 
    Better one bite, at forty, of truth’s bitter rind
      Than the hot wine that gushed from the vintage of twenty!