ENGLAND .

Miraculous genius, grasping at the whole!
Gossiping history calls you cruel, mad.
Was not your hump enough to make you bad,
Politic despot? Aye, with bitter soul,

You played a grand and most stupendous r├┤le;
Numbing your secret nature, good and glad,
To juggle with crowns as does with stones a lad,
And wade through blood to a stupendous goal!

Brave, cunning, reckless, on broad Bosworth field,
Where red swords gleamed, when Death claimed you his own,
You did not falter, Richard, nor did yield,
Or hear again the smothered princes' moan.
No victim-ghosts before your mind's eye reeled.
What your grand soul regretted was a throne!