King Charles I

                                                        Van Dyke's celebrated Triple Portrait of King Charles I

By the Statue of King Charles at Charing Cross

Sombre and rich, the skies;

Great glooms, and starry plains.

Gently the night wind sighs;

Else a vast silence reigns.

The splendid silence clings

Around me: and around

The saddest of all kings

Crowned, and again discrowned.

Comely and calm, he rides

Hard by his own Whitehall:

Only the night wind glides:

No crowds, nor rebels, brawl.

Gone, too, his Court; and yet,

The stars his courtiers are:

Stars in their stations set;

And every wandering star.

Alone he rides, alone,

The fair and fatal king:

Dark night is all his own,

That strange and solemn thing.

Which are more full of fate:

The stars; or those sad eyes?

Which are more still and great:

Those brows; or the dark skies?

Although his whole heart yearn

In passionate tragedy:
Never was face so stern
With sweet austerity.

Vanquished in life, his death
By beauty made amends:
The passing of his breath
Won his defeated ends.

Brief life and hapless? Nay:
Through death, life grew sublime.
Speak after sentence? Yea:
And to the end of time.

Armoured he rides, his head
Bare to the stars of doom:
He triumphs now, the dead,
Beholding London's gloom.

Our wearier spirit faints,
Vexed in the world's employ:
His soul was of the saints;
And art to him was joy.

King, tried in fires of woe!
Men hunger for thy grace:
And through the night I go,
Loving thy mournful face.

Yet when the city sleeps;
When all the cries are still:
The stars and heavenly deeps
Work out a perfect will.

Lionel Johnson (1867-1902 )

Remember!
The execution of King Charles from the 2003 film 'To Kill A King'