VI.

He look'd again, and saw A chamber with funereal sables hung, Wherein there lay a ghastly, headless thing That once had been a king-- And by the corpse a living man, whose doom, Had both been left to Nature's gradual law, Were riper for the garner-house of gloom.[R] Rudely beside the gory clay were flung The Norman sceptre and the Saxon crown;[S] So, after some imperial Tragedy August alike with sorrow and renown, We smile to see the gauds that moved our awe, Purple and orb, in dusty lumber lie,-- Alas, what thousands, on the stage of Time, Envied the baubles, and revered the Mine!

Placed by the trunk--with long and whitening hair By dark-red gouts besprent, the sever'd head Up to the Gazer's musing eyes, the while, Look'd with its livid brow and stony smile. On that sad scene, his gaze the Dreamer fed, Familiar both the Living and the Dead; Terror, and hate, and strife concluded there, Calm in his six-feet realm the monarch lay; And by the warning victim's mangled clay The Phantom-Cromwell smiled,--and bending down With shadowy fingers toy'd about the shadowy crown. "Art thou content at last?--a Greater thou Than one to whom the loftiest bent the knee. First in thy fierce Republic of the Free, Avenger and Deliverer?"

"Fiend," replied The Dreamer, "who shall palter with the tide?-- _Deliverer!_ Pilots who the vessel save Leave not the helm while winds are on the wave. THE FUTURE is the Haven of THE NOW!" "True," quoth the Fiend--Again the darkness spread, And night gave back to air the Doomsman and the Dead!