A Book of Sonnets

Here in a little rustic hermitage
  Alfred the Saxon King, Alfred the Great,
  Postponed the cares of king-craft to translate
  The Consolations of the Roman sage.
Here Geoffrey Chaucer in his ripe old age
  Wrote the unrivalled Tales, which soon or late
  The venturous hand that strives to imitate
  Vanquished must fall on the unfinished page.
Two kings were they, who ruled by right divine,
  And both supreme; one in the realm of Truth,
  One in the realm of Fiction and of Song.
What prince hereditary of their line,
  Uprising in the strength and flush of youth,
  Their glory shall inherit and prolong?