There was a king reigned in the East: 
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink. 
He gathered all that springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round. 
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up: 
They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt: 
Them it was their poison hurt.
-I tell the tale that I heard told. 
Mithridates, he died old.

LXIII

I Hoed and trenched and weeded,
 And took the flowers to fair: 
I brought them home unheeded;
 The hue was not the wear.

So up and down I sow them
 For lads like me to find,
When I shall lie below them,
 A dead man out of mind.

Some seed the birds devour,
 And some the season mars,
But here and there will flower
 The solitary stars,

And fields will yearly bear them
 As light-leaved spring comes on,
And luckless lads will wear them
 When I am dead and gone.