THIS is the story of the King:
Was he not great in everything?
He built him dwelling-places three:
In one of them his Youth should be;
To make it fair for many a feast
He conquered the whole East;
He brought delight from every land,
And gold from many a river’s strand,
And all things precious he could find
There, brazen guarded were the doors;
And o’er the many painted floors
The captive women came and went;
Or, with bright ornament,
Sat in the pillared places gay,
And feasted with him every day,
And fed him with their rosy kiss:
O there he had all bliss!
Then afterward, when he did hear
There was none like him anywhere,
He would behold the sight so sweet
Of all men at his feet:
And, since he heard that certainly
Not like a man was he to die,
For all his lust that palace vast
It seemed too small at last.
Therefore, another house he made,
So wide that it might hold arrayed
The thousands peers of his domain
And here he was a goodly span,
While before him came every man
To kneel and worship in his sight:
O there he had all might!
And yet, most surely, it befel
He tired of this house as well:
Was it too mighty after all?
Or still perhaps too small?
Strangely in all men’s wonderment,
He left it for a tenement
He had all builded in one year:
Now he is dwelling there.
He took full little of his gold;
And of his pleasures manifold
He had but a small heed, they say,
That day he went away:
—O, the new dwelling he hath found
Is but a man’s grave in the ground,
And taketh up but one man’s space
And now, indeed, that he is dead,
The nations have they no more dread?
Lo, is not this the King they swore
To worship evermore?
Will no one Love of his come near
And kiss him where he lieth there,
And warm his freezing lips again?
—Is this then all his reign?
He must have longed ere this to rise
And be again in all men’s eyes;
For the place where he dwelleth now
Lonely it is I trow:
But, just to stand in his own hall
And feel the warmth there once for all—
O would he not give crowns of gold?
For the place is so cold!
But over him a tomb doth stand,
The costliest in all the land;
And of the glory that he bore
So these three dwellings he hath had,
And mighty he hath been and glad,
O hath he not been sad as well?
Perhaps—but who can tell?
This is the story of the King: