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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=409000" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>When I Was King</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">The second time I lived on earth<br>Was several hundred years ago;<br>And—royal by my second birth—<br>I know as much as most men know.<br>I was a king who held the reins<br>As never modern monarch can;<br>I was a king, and I had brains,<br>And, what was more, I was a man! <br>Called to the throne in stormy times,<br>When things were at their very worst,<br>I had to fight—and not with rhymes—<br>My own self and my kindred first;<br>And after that my friends and foes,<br>And great abuses born of greed;<br>And when I’d fairly conquered those,<br>I ruled the land a king indeed. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I found a deal of rottenness,<br>Such as in modern towns we find;<br>I camped my poor in palaces<br>And tents upon the plain behind.<br>I marked the hovels, dens and drums<br>In that fair city by the sea.<br>And burnt the miles of wretched slums<br>And built the homes as they should be. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I stripped the baubles from the State,<br>And on the land I spent the spoil;<br>I hunted off the sullen great,<br>And to the farmers gave the soil.<br>My people were their own police;<br>My courts were free to everyone.<br>My priests were to preach love and peace;<br>My Judges to see justice done. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I’d studied men and studied kings,<br>No crawling cant would I allow;<br>I hated mean and paltry things,<br>As I can hate them even now.<br>A land of men I meant to see,<br>A strong and clean and noble race—<br>No subject dared kneel down to me,<br>But looked his king straight in the face </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Had I not been a king in fact,<br>A king in council-hall and tent,<br>I might have let them crawl and act<br>The courtier to their heart’s content;<br>But when I called on other kings,<br>And saw men kneel, I felt inclined<br>To gently tip the abject things<br>And kick them very hard behind. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">My subjects were not slaves, I guess,<br>But though the women in one thing—<br>A question ’twas of healthy dress—<br>Would dare to argue with their king<br>(I had to give in there, I own,<br>Though none denied that I was strong),<br>Yet they would hear my telephone<br>If anything went very wrong. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I also had some poets bright—<br>Their songs were grand, I will allow—<br>They were, if I remember right,<br>About as bad as bards are now.<br>I had to give them best at last,<br>And let them booze and let them sing;<br>As it is now, so in the past,<br>They’d small respect for gods or king. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I loved to wander through the streets—<br>I carried neither sword nor dirk—<br>And watch the building of my fleets,<br>And watch my artisans at work.<br>At times I would take off my coat<br>And show them how to do a thing—<br>Till someone, clucking in his throat,<br>Would stare and gasp, ‘It is the king!’ </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And I would say, ‘Shut up, you fools!<br>Is it for this my towns I burn?<br>You don’t know how to handle tools,<br>And by my faith you’ll have to learn!’<br>I was a king, but what of that?<br>A king may warble in the spring<br>And carry eggs home in his hat,<br>Provided that he is a king. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I loved to stroll about the town<br>With chums at night, and talk of things,<br>And, though I chanced to wear the crown,<br>My friends, by intellect, were kings.<br>When I was doubtful, then I might<br>Discuss a matter quietly,<br>But when I felt that I was right<br>No power on earth could alter me! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And now and then it was no sin<br>Nor folly to relax a bit—<br>I’d take my friends into an inn<br>And call for wine and pay for it.<br>And then of many things we’d clack<br>With loosened tongues and visions clear—<br>I often heard behind my back<br>The whispered ‘Peace, the king is here!’ </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The women harped about a queen,<br>I knew they longed to have a court<br>And flaunt their feathers on the scene,<br>But hitherto I’d held the fort.<br>My subjects wanted me, no doubt,<br>To give the throne a son and heir—<br>(There were some little kings about,<br>But that was neither here nor there). </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I’d no occasion for a wife—<br>A queen as yet was not my plan;<br>I’d seen a lot of married life—<br>My sire had been a married man.<br>‘A son and heir be hanged!’ I said—<br>‘How dare you ask for such a thing,<br>‘You fight it out when I am dead<br>‘And let the best man be the king!’ </div><div style="margin:10px 0">‘Your Majesty, we love you well!’<br>A candid friend would say to me—<br>‘But there be tales that people tell<br>‘Unfitted to thy dignity’—<br>‘My dignity be damned!’ I’d say,<br>‘Bring me no women’s chattering!<br>‘I’ll be a man while yet I may—<br>‘When trouble comes I’ll be a king! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I’d kept my kingdom clean and strong<br>While other kingdoms were like ours—<br>I had no need to brook a wrong,<br>I feared not all the rotten Powers<br>I did not eat my heart out then,<br>Nor feebly fight in verse or prose<br>I’d take five hundred thousand men<br>To argue matters with my foes! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">It thrilled me through, the mighty tramp<br>Of armëd men, the thundering cheer—<br>The pregnant whisper through the camp<br>At dead of night: ‘The King is here!’<br>And though we paid for victory<br>On some fields that were hard to hold,<br>The faith my soldiers had in me<br>Oft strengthened mine a hundredfold. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I’d chat with soldiers by the fires<br>On rocky heights and river banks,<br>I’d seek the brains that war requires,<br>And take my captains from the ranks.<br>And so, until the storm was by,<br>And came the peace just war can bring,<br>I bore me so that men might cry<br>With all their hearts, ‘God Save the King.’ </div><div style="margin:10px 0">When I was king the world was wide,<br>And I was strong and I was free.<br>I knew no hatred, knew no pride,<br>No envy and no treachery.<br>I feared no lies. I feared no truth,<br>Nor any storm that time might bring.<br>I had my love, I had my youth,<br>The world was mine when I was king. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Peace came at last—and strange is Fate—<br>The women begged just once alone<br>To see me robed in royal state<br>And seated on my father’s throne.<br>I thought, ‘Shall I this boon deny?’<br>And said—and ’twas a paltry thing:<br>‘I’ll show the fools just once that I<br>‘Can look, as well as be, a king.’ </div><div style="margin:10px 0">They dusted out the castle old,<br>And from the closet and the chest<br>They dug the jewels set in gold—<br>The crown and robes and all the rest.<br>They came with eyes like stars of night,<br>With diamonds set in raven hair,<br>They came with arms and bosoms white—<br>And, Oh my God! but one was fair! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">They dressed me as the kings had been,<br>The ancient royal purple spread,<br>And one that was to be my queen,<br>She placed the circlet on my head.<br>They pressed their hearts and bowed to me,<br>They knelt with arms uplifted all.<br>I felt the rush of vanity—<br>The pride that goes before the fall. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>And then the banquet and the wine<br>With Satan’s music and the glance<br>Of siren eyes. Those captains mine<br>Were reeling in the maddening dance:<br>A finger writing on the wall,<br>While girls sang as the angels sing—<br>A drunken boaster in the hall,<br>The fool that used to be a king. <br>I rose again—no matter how—<br>A woman, and a deeper fall—<br>I move amongst my people now<br>The most degraded of them all.<br>But, if in centuries to come,<br>I live once more and claim my own,<br>I’ll see my subjects blind and dumb<br>Before they set me on a throne</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Henry+Lawson">Henry Lawson</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=409000" data-title="When I Was King de Henry Lawson" data-description="The second time I lived on earth
Was several hundred years ago;
And—royal by my second birth—
I know as much as most men know.
I was a king who held the reins
As never modern monarch can;
I was a king, and I had brains,
And, what was more, I w..."></div>
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