That swift, convicting glow all round him ran;
'Twas close beside him there,
Sunrise whose Memnon is the soul of man.


V

O Broker-King, is this thy wisdom's fruit?
A dynasty plucked out as 't were a weed
Grown rankly in a night, that leaves no seed! 70
Could eighteen years strike down no deeper root?
But now thy vulture eye was turned on Spain;
A shout from Paris, and thy crown falls off,
Thy race has ceased to reign,
And thou become a fugitive and scoff:
Slippery the feet that mount by stairs of gold,
And weakest of all fences one of steel;
Go and keep school again like him of old,
The Syracusan tyrant;--thou mayst feel
Royal amid a birch-swayed commonweal! 80


VI

Not long can he be ruler who allows
His time to run before him; thou wast naught
Soon as the strip of gold about thy brows
Was no more emblem of the People's thought:
Vain were thy bayonets against the foe
Thou hadst to cope with; thou didst wage