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" BETTER A LIVING DOG THAN A DEAD LION."
NO, no, no ; let the curs that leap yelping around him
Bay out their feeble anger; the monarch has death for state.
Hunted and wounded and slain, let him lie where the trackers have found him,
With the thorns that he fell on in dying pressed into his leonine breast,
With the undergrowth closing above him, a shroud for the king in his rest.
No, no, no ; though his reign may be broken and ended,
King in his life he was, and in death he is kingly still.
What though his subjects have fled, though he lieth untended, unfriended?