A King's Soliloquy

ON THE NIGHT OF HIS FUNERAL     From the slow march and muffled drum         And crowds distrest,     And book and bell, at length I have come         To my full rest.     A ten years' rule beneath the sun         Is wound up here,     And what I have done, what left undone,         Figures out clear.     Yet in the estimate of such         It grieves me more     That I by some was loved so much         Than that I bore,     From others, judgment of that hue         Which over-hope     Breeds from a theoretic view         Of regal scope.     For kingly opportunities         Right many have sighed;     How best to bear its devilries         Those learn who have tried!     I have eaten the fat and drunk the sweet,         Lived the life out     From the first greeting glad drum-beat         To the last shout.     What pleasure earth affords to kings         I have enjoyed     Through its long vivid pulse-stirrings         Even till it cloyed.     What days of drudgery, nights of stress         Can cark a throne,     Even one maintained in peacefulness,         I too have known.     And so, I think, could I step back         To life again,     I should prefer the average track         Of average men,     Since, as with them, what kingship would         It cannot do,     Nor to first thoughts however good         Hold itself true.     Something binds hard the royal hand,         As all that be,     And it is That has shaped, has planned         My acts and me.     May 1910.