Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/296

THE BLAMELESS PRINCE And the trains joined behind, the lady bore

Her beauteous head askance, yet wist full well

How the Prince looked and spoke; unwittingly,

With the strange female sense and secret eye,

Made of him there her subtle estimate,

Forecast his lot, and thought how all things flow

To those who have a surfeit. Could the great,

The perfect Queen, she marvelled, truly know

And love him at his value? In his turn,

He read her face as 't were a marble urn

Embossed with Truth and blushful Innocence,

Yet with the wild Loves carven in repose;

And as he looked he felt, and knew not whence,

A thought like this come as the wind that blows:

To live for!"—So they reached the sculptured door

And casements gilded with the dying light.

That eve the host spread out a stately board,

And with his household far into the night

Feasted the Prince. The lady, next her lord,

Drooped like a musk-rose trained beside a tomb.

Loath was the guest that night to seek his room.

! wherefore tell again an oft-told tale,—

That of the sleeping knight who lost his wage

In the enchanted land, though cased with mail,

And bore the sacred shrine an empty gage?

How this thing went it were not worth to view

But for the triple coil which thence outgrew;

How, with the morn, the ancient chamberlain

Made off, and on the marriage business moved; 266