Of all the kings with any right divine
Does one rule over smaller plots than mine?
Or fewer subjects? Nay, a king of one!
And I am less a vassal more a son
(A son whose favour was to often wane,
Albeit through neglect and not disdain),
Adopted to record his flagging life
Through war and famine, death and bloody strife.
(Or mild fatigue, malaise and scuttled dreams -
this mine hath not a lustre to its seams).
I’ll see it done. Our labour’s still to do.
Our masters bark and scriven we on cue.
A waste, for none make visit to his tomb
(The pantheon of greats shared not their room),
Or mark the day to celebrate his birth,
Invoke his name to stimulate their mirth,
In scorn or joy or love it matters not,
For soon his name the scribes of time shall blot.
Thus gone from any record, to decay;
His deeds were far too trifling to relay.
What few too dim to draw their weary eyes,
And here I do admit I sympathise,
For deeds abound sufficiently to feed
Their busy quills without the heedless need
To eternise the sorry rule of one
Who barely left his kingdom to become
Any more than any beggar’s son.
But why this eulogy? I do not know
(Too readily I adumbrate deaths blow),
For very much alive doth he remain,
If livings what you call a state of shame,
For though his castle walls be solid stone,
And tithes be timely given to the throne,
And pastures green and fields more than fair,
A weight upon his shoulders doth he bear.
‘Tis like the lead of hypocrites to wear,
Though that cruel fate does not befit the crime.
His crime is that of ever squand’ring time:
The time of youth, for time it has been said
Is only precious when its gone and fled.
And when this bitter truth made know its woe
It struck him deep and beat his spirit low.
But though he holds the fairest share of blame
In building up this citadel of shame
Another’s council long had steered him wrong;
A being, that of Earth does not belong,
Or any holy land but that of flame -
Of passions wild and blessèd virtues lame.
But passions of the elemental kind,
That lure the weak and stultify their mind.
Thus to my king this parasite did bind.
But ‘twas in youth - as I shall now attest,
For ev’ry worthy tale surely best
Be started at the part before the rest.
And even I to this decree shall bow,
So lest I start a literary row
Or cause a stiff biographer to fret
I’ll let our tale’s chronology reset
Returning to the age he was beset.