Classic Poem

The Lost Crown

You ask me why I sometimes drop
The threads of talk I weave with you,
And midway in expression stop
As if a sudden trumpet blew.

It is because a trumpet blows
From steeps your feet will never climb:
It calls my soul from present woes
To rule some buried realm of Time.

Wide open swing the guarded gates,
That shut from you the vales of dawn;
And there my car of triumph waits,
By white, immortal horses drawn.

A throne of gold the wheels uphold,
Each spoke a ray of jewelled fire:
The crimson banners float unrolled,
Or falter when the winds expire.

Lo! where the valley's bed expands,
Through cloudy censer-smoke, up-curled —
The avenue to distant lands —
The single landscape of a world!

I mount the throne: I seize the rein;
Between the shouting throngs I go,
The millions crowding hill and plain,
And now a thousand trumpets blow!

The armies of the world are there,
The pomp, the beauty, and the power,
Far-shining through the dazzled air,
To crown the triumph of the hour.

Enthroned aloft, I seem to float
On wide, victorious wings upborne,
Past the rich vale's expanding throat,
To where the palace burns with morn.

My limbs dilate, my breast expands,
A starry fire is in my eye;
I ride above the subject lands,
A god beneath the hollow sky.

Peal out, ye clarions! shout, ye throngs,
Beneath your banners reeling folds!
This pageantry to me belongs, —
My hand its proper sceptre holds.

Surge on, in still augmenting lines,
Till the great plain be overrun,
And my procession far outshines
The bended pathway of the sun!

But when my triumph overtops
This language, which from vassals grew,
The crown from off my forehead drops,
And I again am serf with you.English