thy plumed canopy,
Thou might'st be any one!
How is it with thee? Man! Charles Stuart! King!
See, the white, heavy, overhanging lids
Press on his grey eyes, set in gory death!
How blanch'd his dusky cheek! that late was flush'd
Because a people would not be his slaves,
And now a, worm may mock him--
This strong frame
Promis'd long life, 'tis constituted well;
'Twas but a lying promise, like the rest!
Dark is the world, of tyranny within
Yon roofless house, where Silence holds her court
Before Decay's last revel.
Yet, O king,
I would insult thee not. But if thy spirit
Circle unseen around the guilty clay,
Till it be buried, and those solemn words
Give "dust to dust," leaving the soul no home
On this vain earth,
O hear me!
Or if still
There be a something sentient in the body,
Through all corruption's stages, till our frames
Rot, rot, and seem no more,--and thus the soul
Is cag'd in bones through which the north wind rattles,
Or haunts the black skull wash'd up by the waves
Upon the moaning shore--poor weeping skull,
From whose deep-blotted, eyeless socket-holes
The dank green seaweed drips its briny tear--
If it be so, that round the festering grave,
Where yet some earth-brown, human relic moulders,
The parting ghost may linger to the last,
Till it have share in all the elements,
Shriek in the storm, or glide in summer air,
O hear me!

Or, if thou hast stood already,
Shrivell'd, but for His mercy, into nought,
Before the blaze of Heaven's offended eye,
And hast receiv'd thy sentence--Hear me, thence!
There is none with us now!
Thus then I lay my hand upon thy breast,
And while my heart is nearly still as thine,
Swear that I slew thee but to stop thy crimes;
(O soul of Charles, wilt thou not plead for Cromwell?)
Swear that I would my head were low as thine,
Could'st thou have liv'd belov'd, and loving England--
For I have done a deed in slaying thee
Shall wring the world's heart with its memory;
Men shall believe me not, as they are base,
Fools shall cry "hypocrite," as they dare judge
The naked fervour of my struggling soul.
God judge between us!--I am arm'd in this,
Could'st thou have reign'd, not crushing English hearts
With fierce compression of thine iron sway,
Cromwell had liv'd contented and unknown
To teach his children loyalty and faith
Sacred and simple, as the grass-grown mound,
That should have press'd more lightly on his bones,
Than ever greatness on his wearied spirit!

_Re-ente