The singer’s cadence hangs upon the stone,
Where Barberini’s vaulted stage was high;
With orange bloom the Roman air is sly,
And through the shadow of the triple throne
The subtle prelate tempts the ear alone,
Persuading wit its native rage to buy
With marble ease, while northern trumpets cry
Against the bishops, unregarded, blown.

Then on the height of Bellosguardo stayed
An old man turned his clouded, inward gaze
Toward the dark tube that dared the spheres unsay;
Blind, by decree and Roman censure weighed,
Northward the mule turns through the mountain way:
I trade this music for the hangman’s blaze.

The bolster keeps no hollow but my own,
Nor across the linen will the frost relent
Where none has lain; I light no second wax,
Nor open Isocrates to call the boys
While down the unthreaded stair the timber yields
To footfalls none can hear.

The feast of Michael passed;

The roads beyond the river stiffened hard
Before the King reached Oxford from the field,
Yet at her father’s gate the horseman sent
To claim the consort of an ordained bond
Found only insolence. Behind the pale
They cheered the mitre from their pewter cans,
While she sat sullen, barren of that speech
Which God appointed for the solace meet
Of rational minds, yet took the nuptial ring.

The canon holds what charity would loose:
The prelate’s court denies the mind its plea,
Yoking the quick unto the senseless clay
To call the corpse a sacrament.

 I lie
Straight in the horsehair, while the ditch’s reek
Crawls through the casement in the winter chill,
Bound to the stone, and mocked by every street.

The dry latch holds; within this woollen room
The heavy heat of August works the oak
Till every shutter groans against the noon,
Whose glare beats down where Smithfield cattle bleed
And wash the pavement with their steaming gall.
A second darkness this: the first was wrought
By eleven winters’ oil for the cause
To feed the drop serene; this second night
Enfolds the city, where the tapsters run
To hail a wanton prince with spilled bouse,
While on their bellies freeborn subjects crawl
To sue the collar back.

Along the lane
A heavy tread approaches, halts, and trends
Toward the gate — no tipstaff yet to thrust
The Commons warrant through my quiet door;
My darkness shall defraud them of their lamp
When they unhouse my bones.

Let search be made:
The cupboard keeps no paper from their sight.
Already through the rotten lath I taste
A bitter cinder blowing from the yard,
Not fat of mutton from the butcher’s trough,
But rag and sheepskin, which the executioner
At the Old Bailey grates to common coal.
The leaf that answered Salmasius’ pride
Is roasted in the wind: they fondly dream
The common hangman’s shovel can heap up
The severed neck of Charles, or prelatick spit
Rejoin the head unto the anointed crown.

God is not mocked, though England is unknit:
A kennel of base dogs that lick the rod
Because the tyrant casts an offal down.
The chalk-stones ripen in my crooked hand
To warn me of the winter. In the ground
Bradshaw corrupts; and Cromwell lies entombed,
Whose dry remains the hangman swears to hang
At Tyburn tree, to make the rabble sport.
Let the dead suffer; let the living bide
Their false Oblivion, which I scorn to take.
Though every leaflet vanish in the spark,
And bailiffs batter on the rotting stair,
The cause was just. The king was justly slain.