KING COLE
By
John Masefield
RosasGallipoliRight RoyalThe FaithfulSelected PoemsLost EndeavourA Mainsail HaulCaptain MagaretReynard the FoxThe Daffodil FieldsThe Old Front LineMultitude and SolitudeCollected Poems and PlaysSalt Water Poems and BalladsGood Friday and Other PoemsThe Tragedy of Pompey the GreatPhilip the King and Other PoemsThe Tragedy of Nan and Other PoemsLollingdon Downs and Other PoemsThe Story of a Round-House and Other PoemsThe Locked Chest; and The Sweeps of Ninety-eightThe Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street
KING COLE
BY
JOHN MASEFIELD
WITH DRAWINGS IN BLACK AND WHITE
BY
JUDITH MASEFIELD
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1921
All rights reserved
COPYRIGHT, 1921,By JOHN MASEFIELD.
Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1921.
To
My Wife
KING COLE
King Cole was King before the troubles came,
The land was happy while he held the helm,
The valley-land from Condicote to Thame,
Watered by Thames and green with many an elm.
For many a year he governed well his realm,
So well-beloved, that, when at last he died,
It was bereavement to the countryside.
So good, so well-beloved, had he been
In life, that when he reached the judging-place
[Pg 8](There where the scales are even, the sword keen),
The Acquitting Judges granted him a grace,
Aught he might choose, red, black, from king to ace,
Beneath the bright arch of the heaven's span;
He chose, to wander earth, the friend of man.
So, since that time, he wanders shore and shire,
An old, poor, wandering man, with glittering eyes
Helping distressful folk to their desire
By power of spirit that within him lies.
Gentle he is, and quiet, and most wise,
He wears a ragged grey, he sings sweet words,
And where he walks there flutter little birds.
And when the planets glow as dusk begins
He pipes a wooden flute to music old.
Men hear him on the downs, in lonely inns,
In valley woods, or up the Chiltern wold;
His piping feeds the starved and warms the cold,
It gives the beaten courage; to the lost
[Pg 9]It brings back faith, that lodestar of the ghost.
And most he haunts the beech-tree-pasturing chalk,
The Downs and Chilterns with the Thames between.
There still the Berkshire shepherds see him walk,
Searching the unhelped woe with instinct keen,
His old hat stuck with never-withering green,
His flute in poke, and little singings sweet
Coming from birds that flutter at his feet.
Not long ago a circus wandered there,
Where good King Cole most haunts the public way,
Coming from Reading for St. Giles's Fair
Through rain unceasing since Augustine's Day;