While eager flames consume those nerveless hands
So often raised to threaten or command,
Suck out those eyes that filled the court with fear,
And only left of all this royal pomp
A little dust the winds may blow away.

But here that selfsame monarch comes in view,
For royal purple clothed in filthy rags,
And lusterless that crown of priceless gems;
Those eyes, whose bend so lately awed the world,
Blinking and bleared and blinded by the light;
Those hands, that late a royal scepter bore,
Shaking with fear and dripping all with blood.
And as he looked that some should give him place
And lead him to a seat for monarchs fit,
He only saw a group of innocents
His hands had slain, now clothed in spotless white,
From whom he fled as if by furies chased,
Fled from those groves and gardens of delight,
Fled on and down a broad and beaten road
By many trod, and toward a desert waste
With distance dim, and gloomy, grim and vast,
Where piercing thorns and leafless briars grow,
And dead sea-apples, ashes to the taste,
Where loathsome reptiles crawl and hiss and sting,
And birds of night and bat-winged dragons fly,
Where beetling cliffs seem threatening instant fall,
And opening chasms seem yawning to devour,
And sulphurous seas were swept with lurid flames
That seethe and boil from hidden fires below.