Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/295

THE BLAMELESS PRINCE From passion and from pain enfranchised quite,

Alike from gain and never-stanched Regret,

Calm as the blind who have not seen the light,

The dumb who hear no precious voice; and yet

The sun forever pours his lambent fire

And the high winds are vocal with desire.

And there are those whose fervent souls are wed

To glorious bodies, panoplied for love,

Born to hear sweetest words that can be said,

To give and gather kisses, and to move

All men with longing after them,—to know

What flowers of paradise for lovers grow.

The Vestal, with her silvery content,

The Lesbian, with the passion and the pain,—

Which creature hath their one Creator lent

More light of heaven? Who would dare restrain

The beams of either? who the radiance mar

Of the white planet or the burning star?

If in its innocence a life is bound

With cords that thrall its birthright and design,

Let those whose hands the evil meshes wound

Pray that it cast no look beyond their line;

That no strong voice too late may enter in

Its prison-range, to teach what might have been.

Was there no conscious spirit thus to plead

For this bright lady, as the wondering guest

Closed with his welcomers, and each took heed

Of each, and horse to horse they rode abreast,

Nearing a fair and spacious house that stood,

Half hidden, in the edges of the wood?

And while, the last court-tidings running o'er,

Their talk on this and that at random fell, 265