IDYLS

DIT

A KING LIVED LONG AGO

From Pippa Passes

A KING lived long ago,

In the morning of the world,

When earth was nigher heaven than now;
And the king's locks curled,

Disparting o'er a forehead full:

As the milk-white space 'twixt horn and horn

Of some sacrificial bull

Only calm as a babe new-born:

For he was got to a sleepy mood,......

So safe from all decrepitude,

Age with its bane, so sure gone by,

(The gods so loved him while he dreamed) That, having lived thus long, there seemed No need the king should ever die.

Among the rocks his city was:
Before his palace, in the sun,
He sat to see his people pass,
And judge them every one
From its threshold of smooth stone.
They haled him many a valley-thief
Caught in the sheep-pens, robber-chief
Swarthy and shameless, beggar-cheat,

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Spy-prowler, or rough pirate found
On the sea-sand left aground;
And sometimes clung about his feet,
With bleeding lip and burning cheek,
A woman, bitterest wrong to speak
Of one with sullen thickset brows:
And sometimes from the prison-house
The angry priests a pale wretch brought,
Who through some chink had pushed and
pressed

On knees and elbows, belly and breast,
Worm-like into the temple,-caught

He was by the very god,

Who ever in the darkness strode

Backward and forward, keeping watch
O'er his brazen bowls, such rogues to catch!
These, all and every one,

The king judged, sitting in the sun.
His councillors, on left and right,
Looked anxious up, but no surprise
Disturbed the king's old smiling eyes
Where the very blue had turned to white.
'T is said, a Python scared one day
The breathless city, till he came,
With forky tongue and eyes on flame,
Where the old king sat to judge alway;
But when he saw the sweepy hair
Girt with a crown of berries rare
Which the god will hardly give to wear
To the maiden who singeth, dancing bare
In the altar-smoke by the pine-torch lights,
At his wondrous forest rites,-

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Seeing this he did not dare
Approach that threshold in the sun,
Assault the old king smiling there.

Such grace had kings when the world began!

1841.

Robert Browning

DORA

WITH farmer Allan at the farm abode
William and Dora. William was his son,
And she his niece. He often look'd at them,
And often thought, "I'll make them man and
wife."

Now Dora felt her uncle's will in all,

And yearn'd toward William; but the youth,
because

He had always been with her in the house,
Thought not of Dora.

Then there came a day
When Allan call'd his son, and said: "My son,
I married late, but I would wish to see
My grandchild on my knees before I die;
And I have set my heart upon a match.
Now therefore look to Dora; she is well
To look to; thrifty too beyond her age.
She is my brother's daughter; he and I
Had once hard words, and parted, and he died
In foreign lands; but for his sake I bred

His daughter Dora. Take her for your wife;

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