Another train draws near a funeral-pile, Of aloes, sandal-wood and cassia built, And drenched with every incense-breathing oil, And draped with silks and rich with rarest flowers, Where grim officials clothed in robes of state Placed one in royal purple, decked with gems, Whose word had been a trembling nation's law, Whose angry nod was death to high or low. No mourners gather round this costly pile; The people shrink in terror from the sight. But sullen soldiers there keep watch and ward While eager flames consume those nerveless hands So often raised to threaten or command, Suck out those eyes that filled the court with fear, And only left of all this royal pomp A little dust the winds may blow away. But here that selfsame monarch comes in view, For royal purple clothed in filthy rags, And lusterless that crown of priceless gems; Those eyes, whose bend so lately awed the world, Blinking and bleared and blinded by the light; Those hands, that late a royal scepter bore, Shaking with fear and dripping all with blood. And as he looked that some should give him place And lead him to a seat for monarchs fit, He only saw a group of innocents His hands had slain, now clothed in spotless white, From whom he fled as if by furies chased, Fled from those groves and gardens of delight, Fled on and down a broad and beaten road By many trod, and toward a desert waste With distance dim, and gloomy, grim and vast, Where piercing thorns and leafless briars grow, And dead sea-apples, ashes to the taste, Where loathsome reptiles crawl and hiss and sting, And birds of night and bat-winged dragons fly, Where beetling cliffs seem threatening instant fall, And opening chasms seem yawning to devour, And sulphurous seas were swept with lurid flames That seethe and boil from hidden fires below. Again he saw, beyond that silent vale, One frail and old, without a rich man's gate Laid down to die beneath a peepul-tree, And parched with thirst and pierced with sudden pain, A root his pillow and the earth his bed; Alone he met the King of terrors there; Whose wasting body, cumbering now the ground, Chandalas cast upon the passing stream To float and fester in the fiery sun, Till whirled by eddies, caught by roots, it lay A prey for vultures and for fishes food. That selfsame day a dart of deadly pain Shot through that rich man's hard, unfeeling heart, That laid him low, beyond the power to save, E'en while his servants cast without his gates That poor old man, who came to beg him spare His roof-tree, where his fathers all had died, His hearth, the shrine of all his inmost joys, His little home, to every heart so dear; And in due season tongues of hissing flames That rich man's robes like snowflakes whirled in air, And curled his crackling skin, consumed his flesh, And sucked the marrow from his whitened bones.