Page:Helen of Troy and Other Poems.djvu/35

Rh And surely it were little praise to me If I had pleased them well throughout my life.

I was a queen, the daughter of a king. The crown was never heavy on my head, It was my right, and was a part of me. The women thought me proud, the men were kind, And bowed right gallantly to kiss my hand, And watched me as I passed them calmly by, Along the halls I shall not tread again. What if, to-night, I should revisit them? The warders at the gates, the kitchen-maids, The very beggars would stand off from me, And I, their queen, would climb the stairs alone, Pass through the banquet-hall, a loathèd thing, And seek my chambers for a hiding-place, And I should find them but a sepulchre, The very rushes rotted on the floors, The fire in ashes on the freezing hearth. I was a queen, and he who loved me best Made me a woman for a night and day, And now I go unqueened forevermore. A queen should never dream on summer eves, When hovering spells are heavy in the dusk:— I think no night was ever quite so still, So smoothly lit with red along the west, So deeply hushed with quiet through and through. And strangely clear, and deeply dyed with light, The trees stood straight against a paling sky, With Venus burning lamp-like in the west.

I walked alone amid a thousand flowers,