BY THE STATUE OF KING CHARLES AT CHARING CROSS
by: Lionel Johnson (1867-1902)
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- SOMBRE and rich, the skies;
- Great glooms, and starry plains.
- Gently the night wind sighs;
- Else a vast silence reigns.
- The splendid silence clings
- Around me: and around
- The saddest of all kings
- Crowned, and again discrowned.
- Comely and calm, he rides
- Hard by his own Whitehall:
- Only the night wind glides:
- No crowds, nor rebels, brawl.
- Gone, too, his Court; and yet,
- The stars his courtiers are:
- Stars in their stations set;
- And every wandering star.
- Alone he rides, alone,
- The fair and fatal king:
- Dark night is all his own,
- That strange and solemn thing.
- Which are more full of fate:
- The stars; or those sad eyes?
- Which are more still and great:
- Those brows; or the dark skies?
- Although his whole heart yearn
- In passionate tragedy:
- Never was face so stern
- With sweet austerity.
- Vanquished in life, his death
- By beauty made amends:
- The passing of his breath
- Won his defeated ends.
- Brief life and hapless? Nay:
- Through death, life grew sublime.
- Speak after sentence? Yea:
- And to the end of time.
- Armoured he rides, his head
- Bare to the stars of doom:
- He triumphs now, the dead,
- Beholding London’s gloom.
- Our wearier spirit faints,
- Vexed in the world’s employ:
- His soul was of the saints;
- And art to him was joy.
- King, tried in fires of woe!
- Men hunger for thy grace:
- And through the night IÂ go,
- Loving thy mournful face.
- Yet when the city sleeps;
- When all the cries are still:
- The stars and heavenly deeps
- Work out a perfect will.
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- No reason for posting this other than the fact that it has always struck me as one of the most beautiful poems in the English language. Catholic convert Lionel Johnson had a brief, and in many ways a tormented, life, but the beauty he could conjure up with words remains an imperishable monument to the man, more lasting than the statue that inspired this poem.Â
- He also granted to his beloved King Charles I, misguided, devoted husband, Christian, foolish, good father, devious, pious, heroic, a memorial much greater than any mere statue. Alec Guinness memorably played the monarch, who had his finest moments during his spirited defense at his mockery of a trial and at his execution, in the movie Cromwell, a film filled with the usual historical howlers that seem to be required whenever a movie is made on a historical subject. However Alec Guinness gave a masterful performance as King Charles and captured the look of the man well. Here is the execution scene from the film which is correct in regard to most of the details.
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89).
‘My own heart let me have more have pity on; let’
MY own heart let me have more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst ’s all-in-all in all a world of wet.
Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
’s not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather—as skies
Betweenpie mountains—lights a lovely mile.