VIII.
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hat king, who lived to God's own heart,Yet less serenely died than he;Charles left behind no harsh decree,For schoolmen, with laborious art,To save from cruelty:[54]Those, for whom love could no excuses frame,He graciously forgot to name.Thus far my muse, though rudely, has designedSome faint resemblance of his godlike mind;But neither pen nor pencil can expressThe parting brothers tenderness;Though that's a term too mean and low;The blest above a kinder word may know:But what they did, and what they said,The monarch who triumphant went,The militant who staid,Like painters, when their heightening arts are spent,I cast into a shade.That all-forgiving king,The type of him above,That inexhausted springOf clemency and love,Himself to his next self accused,And asked that pardon which he ne'er refused;For faults not his, for guilt and crimesOf godless men, and of rebellious times;For an hard exile, kindly meant,When his ungrateful country sentTheir best Camillus into banishment,And forced their sovereign's act, they could not his consent.Oh how much rather had that injured chiefRepeated all his sufferings past,Than hear a pardon begged at last,Which, given, could give the dying no relief!He bent, he sunk beneath his grief;His dauntless heart would fain have heldFrom weeping, but his eyes rebelled.Perhaps the godlike hero, in his breast,Disdained, or was ashamed to show,So weak, so womanish a woe,Which yet the brother and the friend so plenteously confest.
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