Page:Pocahontas, and Other Poems.djvu/239

 KING JOHN.

��THERE stands at Runnyrnede a king, while summer clothes

the plains, The hlood of high Plantagenet is coursing through his

veins,

But yet a sceptred hand he lifts, to shade his haggard brow, As if constrained to do a deed his pride would disallow.

He pauses still. His faint eye rests upon those barons

bold, Whose hands are grappling to their swords with fierce and

sudden hold. That pause is broke ; he bows him down before those

steel-girt men, And glorious Magna Charta glows beneath his trembling

pen.

His false lip to a smile is wreathed, as their exulting shout,

From 'neath the green, embowering trees, upon the gale swells out j

Yet lingers long his cowering glance on Thames' translu- cent tide,

As if some deep and bitter thought he from the throng would hide.

�� �