A poet tells the tale of
the king who lost his garments and ceased to be a king: here is the king
who has lost his body, and in the eyes of his court has ceased to be a
man. Is the cold of the earth's night pleasant to him after the purging
fire? What crimes had the honest ghost committed in his days of nature?
He calls them foul crimes! Could such be his? Only who can tell how a
ghost, with his doubled experience, may think of this thing or that? The
ghost and the fire may between them distinctly recognize that as a foul
crime which the man and the court regarded as a weakness at worst, and
indeed in a king laudable.
Alas, poor ghost! Around the house he flits, shifting and shadowy, over
the ground he once paced in ringing armour--armed still, but his very
armour a shadow! It cannot keep out the arrow of the cock's cry, and the
heart that pierces is no shadow. Where now is the loaded axe with which,
in angry dispute, he smote the ice at his feet that cracked to the blow?
Where is the arm that heaved the axe? Wasting in the marble maw of the
sepulchre, and the arm he carries now--I know not what it can do, but it
cannot slay his murderer.
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