Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/442

 Time was! God help me, what am I saying now! Does a Queen's memory wither away to that? Am I so dry as that?^ Am I a shell? Have I become so cheap as this? ... I wonder Why the King cared !" She fell down on her knees Crying, and held his knees with hungry fear. Over his folded arms, as over the ledge Of a storm-shaken parapet, he could see, Below him, like a tumbling flood of gold, The Queen's hair with a crumpled foam of white Around it: "Do you ask, as a child would, For France because it has a name? How long Do you conceive the Queen of the Christian world Would hide herself in France were she to go there? How long should Rome require to find her there? And how long, Rome or not, would such a flower As you survive the unrooting and transplanting That you commend so ingenuously tonight? And if we shared your cave together, how long, And in the joy of what obscure seclusion, If I may say it, were Lancelot of the Lake And Guinevere an unknown man and woman, For no eye to see twice? There are ways to France, But why pursue them for Rome's interdict, And for a longer war? Your path is now As open as mine is dark or would be dark, Without the Light that once had blinded me To death, had I seen more. I shall see more, And I shall not be blind. I pray, moreover, That you be not so now. You are a Queen, And you may be no other. You are too brave And kind and fair for men to cheer with lies. We cannot make one world of two, nor may we Count one life more than one. Could we go back