Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/291

THE BLAMELESS PRINCE Shrewd counsel, and who made, in days gone by,

A visit to this court, and with him led

His son, a gentle Prince, of years anigh

Her own,—twelve summers shone from either head;

And while their elders moved from place to place,—

The field-review, the audience, the chase,—

The Princess and the Prince, together thrown,

With their companions held a mimic court,

And with that sweet equality, the crown

Of Childhood,—which discovers in its sport

No barriers of rank or wealth or power,—

He named himself her consort. From that hour

The mindful Princess never quite forgot

Those joyous days, nor him, the fair-haired Prince;

And though she well had learned her greater lot,

And haply from his thought had passed long since

Her girlish image, chance, that moves between

Two courts, had brought his portrait to the Queen.

This from her cabinet she took one morn,

When they still urged the suit of that old king,

And said, half jesting, with a pretty scorn,

"Why mate your wilful Queen with mouldering

And crabbed Age? Now were he shaped like this,

With such a face, he were not so amiss.

That couples frost and thaw, our minstrels sing."—

And thought again: "Why not? the schemeful king

Perchance would rule us where he should be ruled;

A humbler consort will be sooner schooled."

Forewarned are those whom Fortune's gifts await.

Ere waned a moon the elder prince had learned— 261