Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. V. Browning to Rupert Brooke

Lionel Johnson (1867–1902)

By the Statue of King Charles at Charing Cross

SOMBRE and rich, the skies;

Great glooms, and starry plains.

Gently the night wind sighs;

Else a vast silence reigns.

The splendid silence clings

Around me; and around

The saddest of all kings

Crowned, and again discrowned.

Comely and calm, he rides

Hard by his own Whitehall:

Only the night wind glides:

No crowds, nor rebels, brawl.

Gone too, his Court; and yet,

The stars his courtiers are:

Stars in their stations set;

And every wandering star.

Alone he rides, alone,

The fair and fatal king:

Dark night is all his own,

That strange and solemn thing.

Which are more full of fate:

The stars; or those sad eyes?

Which are more still and great:

Those brows; or the skies?

Although his whole heart yearn

In passionate tragedy:

Never was face so stern

With sweet austerity.

Vanquished in life, his death

By beauty made amends:

The passing of his breath

Won his defeated ends.

Brief life, and hapless? Nay:

Through death, life grew sublime.

Speak after sentence? Yea;

And to the end of time.

Armoured he rides, his head

Bare to the stars of doom:

He triumphs now, the dead,

Beholding London’s gloom.

Our wearier spirit faints,

Vexed in the world’s employ:

His soul was of the saints;

And art to him was joy.

King, tried in fires of woe!

Men hunger for thy grace:

And through the night I go,

Loving thy mournful face.

Yet, when the city sleeps;

When all the cries are still:

The stars and heavenly deeps

Work out a perfect will.