'Keeper, 'tis not that I
feel.
"''Tis the HEART, and not the dinner, fool, that doth my rest
impair:
Can a King be great as I am, prithee, and yet know no care?
Oh, I'm sick, and tired, and weary.'--Some one cried, 'The King's
arm-chair?'
"Then towards the lackeys turning, quick my Lord the Keeper nodded,
Straight the King's great chair was brought him, by two footmen
able-bodied;
Languidly he sank into it: it was comfortably wadded.
"'Leading on my fierce companions,' cried be, 'over storm and
brine,
I have fought and I have conquered! Where was glory like to mine?'
Loudly all the courtiers echoed: 'Where is glory like to thine?'
"'What avail me all my kingdoms? Weary am I now, and old;
Those fair sons I have begotten, long to see me dead and cold;
Would I were, and quiet buried, underneath the silent mould!
"'Oh, remorse, the writhing serpent! at my bosom tears and bites;
Horrid, horrid things I look on, though I put out all the lights;
Ghosts of ghastly recollections troop about my bed of nights.
"'Cities burning, convents blazing, red with sacrilegious fires;
Mothers weeping, virgins screaming, vainly for their slaughtered
sires.
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