| |
| IT was roses, roses, all the way, | |
| With myrtle mixed in my path like mad: | |
| The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway, | |
| The church-spires flamed, such flags they had, | |
| A year ago on this very day. | 5 |
| |
| The air broke into a mist with bells, | |
| The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries. | |
| Had I said, “Good folk, mere noise repels— | |
| But give me your sun from yonder skies!” | |
| They had answered, “And afterward, what else?” | 10 |
| |
| Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun | |
| To give it my loving friends to keep! | |
| Naught man could do, have I left undone: | |
| And you see my harvest, what I reap | |
| This very day, now a year is run. | 15 |
| |
| There’s nobody on the house-tops now— | |
| Just a palsied few at the windows set; | |
| For the best of the sight is, all allow, | |
| At the Shambles’ Gate—or, better yet, | |
| By the very scaffold’s foot, I trow. | 20 |
| |
| I go in the rain, and, more than needs, | |
| A rope cuts both my wrists behind; | |
| And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds, | |
| For they fling, whoever has a mind, | |
| Stones at me for my year’s misdeeds. | 25 |
| |
| Thus I entered, and thus I go! | |
| In triumphs, people have dropped down dead. | |
| “Paid by the world, what dost thou owe | |
| Me?”—God might question; now instead, | |
| ’Tis God shall repay: I am safer so. | 30 |
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