Page:Poems of Sentiment and Imagination.djvu/122

118 Oh, right regally and daintily the lady's bower is furnished,

And right faithfully and watchfully the lady's self is tended;

But God help her! what cares she how her bower is kept and garnished,

Or what sees she that her maidens stand with eyes upon her bended?

Heard she not, or did she dream it, in swoon she so long lay in,

That the young Duke Louis Gascon was betrothed by his mother?

Ah, she knows not—and she dares not ask even her favorite maiden,

For her sacred secret never shall be given to another.

So she closeth her faint eyelids and shuts in the painful vision—

Shuts it in her inmost soul of souls, and hides it there alone;

Shrinking fearfully and full of shame from her own pride's derision,

And enduring all the agony she striveth to disown.

Oh! you should have seen the struggle! why, her face looked harder, whiter

Than a block of sculptured marble—and as motionless it was!

And her hands, save that they seemed to strain and clasp each other tighter,

Had the frozen and the stony look by which death's seeming awes.

So not even the raiment rustled o'er the penthouse of her sighing—

O'er the bosom that was holding such a boundless world of woe;

So she looked as though a statue—a rare statue—had been lying

In her place, to cheat the lookers on, her life made such small show.

And that only the dark lashes on her cheek were black as ever,

And the tresses, lying blackly on the pillow, just the same,

You would think the mould of beauty on the silken couch had never

Smiled a smile, or sighed a sorrow, or had borne a living name.