Page:Lollingdon Downs and other poems, Masefield, 1917.djvu/21

Rh VIII

The Kings go by with jewelled crowns,

Their horses gleam, their banners shake, their spears are many.

The sack of many-peopled towns

Is all their dream:

The way they take

Leaves but a ruin in the break,

And, in the furrow that the ploughmen make,

A stampless penny; a tale, a dream.

The merchants reckon up their gold,

Their letters come, their ships arrive, their freights are glories:

The profits of their treasures sold

They tell and sum;

Their foremen drive

The servants starved to half-alive

Whose labours do but make the earth a hive

Of stinking stories, a tale, a dream.

The priests are singing in their stalls,

Their singing lifts, their incense burns, their praying clamours;

Yet God is as the sparrow falls;