(a trifle)
For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings,
And by some darker hand the lots be cast
To each of us in order of our fates,
Because the greaves of angels are of pearl,
Their spurs of ruby and their saddle-horns of glass;
And I, not favoured by condition of my birth,
Do not sit head of table in that house,
Though maybe what the fare is of a night
I purchased in the yesterday by spear or bow.
My brother is more sage in things abstract,
Can tell what course the aery chargers run,
And what admixture of the elements
Made him, the second-born, superior.
And yet the hemispheres are double-throned;
And we have married daughters of those kings
That keep in treasury the scrolls of wind and rain.
Tonight the green wine and the golden grapes
Shall teach the dusk to scintillate,
And we shall put to heart the songs the other made
Upon his bed of tears. And let no sons of ours
Pursue us like as vagabonds to caves wherein
We must eat rats or varmint things.
For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings.