To-morrow slowly bears to me the crown
Of all my days and deeds, from fortune wrung
With sword and smile, quick thrust and dallying tongue,
Hates masked with love and terror trampled down.
For not to me by right of ancient wrong
Does easy kingship fall from kingly sires;
No random throw of chance my life attires
In regal purple, but with labour long
Of desperate day and swift unslumbering night
I smiled and slew and jostled through the years,
Till one by one behind me fell my fears,
And one by one my foes were put to flight.
Now none withstands me, and I feel at last
The sceptre in my grasp, for when day comes,
And dawn is startled by the roll of drums,
My conquest, bruited on the herald's blast,
Shall hail me king through all the cowering lands:
To-morrow—yet to-night I may not sleep,
But like a robber through the guards I creep
Into the chamber where the great throne stands

To await the dawning majesty of day.
No sound is there, no light, save from the moon
Falls one dim ray to where at stroke of noon
My knees shall bend before him who shall lay
The gold crown on my brow, when I shall rise
To stoop no more and, throned on mailèd power,
Shall sway the lands and peoples from that hour,
Unchallenged and a king in all men's eyes.

Yet dawn delays. Before the throne I kneel
To await the morrow's crown. … But who art thou
Who settest this cold circle on my brow
That grips my temples like a vice of steel?
Hark, hark! The drums! Yet terror chokes my breath;
I cannot rise; my limbs are turned to stone.
Oh, who art thou that sittest on my throne?

I am the king whom all men bow to—Death.