The King and the Sage
I thought it was enough I loved them all.
Yet love may rise, whilst lives about one fall.
In myriad hopes conceiving were I tasked,
Yet all the while, on balconies I basked.
For glory’s garlands shall it ne’er suffice,
To virtue honor and inhabit vice.
Till by degrees my kingdom fell to ruin,
And all its merits, by the winds were strewn.
I spoke when dreams were broke from Fortune’s stings.
“Let gloomy courtiers speak of gloomy things,
And here proclaim the Corronach of Kings;
For this shall be the measure of my sorrow:
That I shall live today, and not tomorrow.”
Thy wits didst fail, yet heart were well.
It is a greater grief I tell.
I found much folly on life’s stage,
And in the embers of our age,
I found myself a bitter sage.
Of those whose lives I could address,
I little thought, and cared still less.
My heart was on a distant shore,
And so their blood beat as before.
Though called by gods, I did not rise!
And where the honor I were wise?
Time pauses not for idle grief,
Of humble men, nor high sharif:
The past a current, life a leaf.
Time passes not for fools alone,
And wiser men, they must atone,
Before their wits decay to bone.
Decay is not the only thing
That Time’s companions ever bring:
And winters fall that summers spring.
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