Classic Poem

I

We heard of that king & his building
Of palaces high overhead,
With fortunes laid out on the gilding:
And just like the ornaments placed on your shelf,
The actors and Plays he had all to himself:
Then agape we all read
He was dead!

II

The gold of Australian diggers
Seemed coppers to what he flung round
On beautiful paintings & figures.
Right over the big snowy mountains at night
His carriage drove flashing electrical light.
Till in horror they found
Their king drowned.

III

His bedroom was awful: to match it
Museums might pour in a tide
And never half floor it or match it.
He walked on a terrace as rich as the Thames;
He looked across earth through a fountain of gems.
And the reason he died?
Suicide!

IV

It came of his reading Romances
And being a king to create
The wonders that jumped in his fancies.
They burst him straight up, like a place undermined.
A wife might have helped, but he hated the kind;
Ran alarmed from a mate.
What a fate!

V

For any such phantasmagory,
The moral is done by a shrug,
To follow the clap of the story.
When hearing of millionaires running amuck,
You know they were hoisted to teach us our luck,
Lift our girl & our mug
In one hug.