COULD I pass those lounging sentries, | |
| Through the aloe-bordered entries, | |
| Up the sweep of squalid stair, | |
| On through chamber after chamber, | |
| Where the sunshine’s gold and amber | 5 |
| Turn decay to beauty rare,— | |
| I should reach a guarded portal, | |
| Where, for strife of issue mortal, | |
| Face to face two kings are met: | |
| One the grisly King of Terrors; | 10 |
| One a Bourbon, with his errors, | |
| Late to conscience-clearing set. | |
| |
| Well his fevered pulse may flutter, | |
| And the priests their mass may mutter | |
| With such fervor as they may; | 15 |
| Cross and chrism and genuflection, | |
| Mop and mow and interjection, | |
| Will not frighten Death away. | |
| By the dying despot sitting, | |
| At the hard heart’s portals hitting, | 20 |
| Shocking the dull brain to work, | |
| Death makes clear what life has hidden, | |
| Chides what life has left unchidden, | |
| Quickens truth life tried to burke. | |
| |
| He but ruled within his borders | 25 |
| After Holy Church’s orders, | |
| Did what Austria bade him do,— | |
| By their guidance flogged and tortured | |
| High-born men, and gently nurtured | |
| Chained with crime’s felonious crew. | 30 |
| What if summer fevers gripped them, | |
| What if winter freezings nipped them, | |
| Till they rotted in their chains? | |
| He had word of Pope and Kaiser— | |
| None could holier be or wiser; | 35 |
| Theirs the counsel, his the reins. | |
| |
| So he pleads excuses eager, | |
| Clutching with his fingers meagre | |
| At the bed-clothes as he speaks: | |
| But King Death sits grimly grinning | 40 |
| At the Bourbon’s cobweb-spinning, | |
| As each cobweb-cable breaks. | |
| And the poor soul from life’s islet, | |
| Rudderless, without a pilot, | |
| Drifteth slowly down the dark; | 45 |
| While ’mid rolling incense vapor, | |
| Chanted dirge, and flaring taper, | |
| Lies the body, stiff and stark. | |
| |
