I see all clear, how as they moved, they chanted,
And made a mute procession in the stream.

(Gazing abstractedly on the water.)

Merrily sang the monks of Ely,
As Canute the king passed by.

Row to the shore, knights, said the king,
And let us hear these churchmen sing.

Still are they singing? It was Candlemas,
My queen sat splendid at the prow and listened
With heaving breast. 'Twas then the passion seized

me

To emulate, to let her know my ear

Had common pleasure with her, and I trilled
The story out. The look she turned on me!
The choir shall sing this music. I resolved
In the glory of the verse to civilize

My blood, to sweeten it, to give it law,

To curb my wild thoughts with the rein of metre.
Row to the shore! So pleasantly it ran,
A ripple on the wave. I grew ambitious
To be a scholar like King Alfred, gather
Wise men about me, in myself possess
A treasure, an enchantment.

For an instant

I looked round royally, and felt a king.

The abbey-chant, the stream, the meadow-land,
The willows glimmering in the sun;-a poet
Wins things to come so close.

KING CANUTE

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

CANUTE was king not of England only, but of Scotland, Denmark, and the islands of the North Sea even to Iceland. The story of the rebuke given to his fawning courtiers illustrates the humility of a really great man.

King Canute was weary-hearted; he had reigned for years a score,

Battling, struggling, pushing, fighting, killing much and robbing more;

And he thought upon his actions, walking by the wild seashore.

'Twixt the Chancellor and Bishop, walked the King with steps sedate,

Chamberlains and grooms came after, silversticks and goldsticks great,

Chaplains, aides-de-camp, and pages, all the officers of state.

Sliding after like his shadow, pausing when he chose to pause,

If a frown his face contracted, straight the courtiers dropped their jaws;

If to laugh the King was minded, out they burst in loud hee-haws.

But that day a something vexed him; that was clear to old and young;

Thrice his Grace had yawned at table when his favorite gleemen sung,

And the Queen would have consoled him, but he bade her hold her tongue.

Something ails my gracious master!" cried the Keeper of the Seal,

'Sure, my lord, it is the lampreys served to dinner, or the veal?"

"Psha!" exclaimed the angry monarch, "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 armchair!"

Then toward 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 he, "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

66

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 at nights.

"Cities burning, convents blazing, red with sacrilegious fires;

Mothers weeping, virgins screaming vainly for their slaughtered sires."

"Such a tender conscience," cries the Bishop, "every one admires.

"Look, the land is crowned with minsters, which your Grace's bounty raised;

Abbeys filled with holy men, where you and Heaven are daily praised;

You, my lord, to think of dying? on my conscience I'm amazed!"

"Nay, I feel,” replied King Canute, "that my end is drawing near."

"Don't say so," exclaimed the courtiers (striving each to squeeze a tear).

"Sure your Grace is strong and lusty, and may live this fifty year."

"Live these fifty years?" the Bishop roared, with actions made to suit.

"Are you mad, my good Lord Keeper, thus to speak of King Canute?

Men have lived a thousand years, and sure His Majesty will do't.

"Adam, Enoch, Lamech, Cainan, Mahaleel, Methusela Lived nine hundred years apiece, and mayn't the King as well as they?"

"Fervently," exclaimed the Keeper, "fervently I trust he may."

"He to die?" resumed the Bishop. "He a mortal like to us?

Death was not for him intended, though communis omnibus;

Keeper, you are irreligious for to talk and cavil thus.

"With his wondrous skill in healing ne'er a doctor can compete,

Loathsome lepers, if he touch them, start up clean upon their feet;

Surely he could raise the dead up, did his Highness think it meet.

"Did not once the Jewish captain stay the sun upon the hill,

And the while he slew the foemen, bid the silver moon stand still?

So, no doubt, could gracious Canute, if it were his sacred will."