If I were king, my pipe should be premier. <br />The skies of time and chance are seldom clear, <br />We would inform them all with bland blue weather. <br />Delight alone would need to shed a tear, <br />For dream and deed should war no more together. <br /> <br />Art should aspire, yet ugliness be dear; <br />Beauty, the shaft, should speed with wit for feather; <br />And love, sweet love, should never fall to sere, <br />If I were king. <br /> <br />But politics should find no harbour near; <br />The Philistine should fear to slip his tether; <br />Tobacco should be duty free, and beer; <br />In fact, in room of this, the age of leather, <br />An age of gold all radiant should appear, <br />If I were king.<br /><br />William Ernest Henley<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/if-i-were-king-2/