Explore "The Vain King (Legends)" by Henry Van Dyke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In robes of Tyrian blue the King was drest, / A jewelled collar shone upon his breast, / A giant ruby glittered in his crown -- / Lord of rich lands and many a splendid town. / In him the glories of an ancient line / Of sober kings, who ruled by right divine, / Were centred; and to him with loyal awe / The people looked for leadership and law. / Ten thousand knights, the safeguard of the land, / Lay like a single sword within his hand; / A hundred courts, with power of life and death, / Proclaimed decrees of justice by his breath; / And all the sacred growths that men had known / Of order and of rule upheld his throne.
Proud was the King: yet not with such a heart / As fits a man to play a royal part. / Not his the pride that honours as a trust / The right to rule, the duty to be just: / Not his the dignity that bends to bear / The monarch's yoke, the master's load of care, / And labours like the peasant at his gate, / To serve the people and protect the State. / Another pride was his, and other joys: / To him the crown and sceptre were but toys, / With which he played at glory's idle game, / To please himself and win the wreaths of fame. / The throne his fathers held from age to age, / To his ambition, seemed a fitting stage / Built for King Martin to display at will, / His mighty strength and universal skill.