| O WHAT am I that the cold wind affrays, | |
| O What am I the ocean could confound | |
| A fort so open to the rebel days | |
| And nature’s mutiny and human wound? | |
| O What am I so weak against the world, | 5 |
| Yea, weaker in my heart that should be strong, | |
| On whom this double warfare is unfurled, | |
| Of outer violence first, then inward wrong? | |
| I am a fair, a fleeting glimpse of God | |
| One moment visible in mortal state, | 10 |
| A bit of heaven caught i’ the prison-clod, | |
| That I nor nature’s self may violate; | |
| Ev’n as a jewel lost from kingly crown | |
| That’s royal still, though fingered by a clown.… | |
| |
| We of the world who shuffle to our doom, | 15 |
| Who dull with common lead the gold of time, | |
| Despoiling where we may the tender bloom | |
| Of all unworldly souls that rise sublime; | |
| Still scourging wisdom nobler than our use | |
| And scorning pity bent on our despair, | 20 |
| Fouling earth’s seldom beauty by abuse | |
| In rage at strength too strong, at fair too fair; | |
| Nathless we suffer pain with them we slay, | |
| And more than they, as we their death survive. | |
| Weep not for them so glorious in decay,— | 25 |
| Weep thou for us, inglorious and alive: | |
| Stricken ourselves in their destruction, till | |
| That inward Saviour come we cannot kill.… | |
| |
| Yet, longer dwelling in that ruined court | |
| Where man, the stricken king, so ill does reign | 30 |
| I find his folly wiser than report | |
| And his defilement daughter of his pain. | |
| He’s like a king who never knew repose | |
| But lives in constant dread to be o’erthrown, | |
| Buying a half-obedience from his foes | 35 |
| And half-a-king to them who would have none. | |
| And so his robe is stained, his front dismayed, | |
| His court a mock, himself but half a king; | |
| And so his magnanimity’s arrayed, | |
| So foully gowned, a self-impeaching thing. | 40 |
| ’Tis so his royalty would be a scorn | |
| If it were not too piteous and forlorn. | |
| |
| Himself his foe and bitter regicide, | |
| Himself the faction risen in his state, | |
| Himself his spy and minister, to chide | 45 |
| Himself to wrath, and nourish his own hate; | |
| Himself his fool that can himself beguile, | |
| Himself his scullion, foul to that degree, | |
| Himself his beggar, skilled in cunning wile | |
| Himself to plead in his necessity; | 50 |
| Yet king withal, and proved by future act | |
| When all that baser self he may resign, | |
| Leagued with himself and firm in his own pact | |
| To live a monarch, noble in his line! | |
| A king withal, and nowise made more clear: | 55 |
| His knavish self his lordly self does fear. | |
