Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/321

THE BLAMELESS PRINCE Months, seasons passed, yet evermore a pall

Hung round the court. The sorrow and the cause

Were always with her; after things were tame

Beside the shadow of his deeds and fame.

Her palaces and parks seemed desolate;

No joy was left in sky or street or field;

No age, she thought, would see the Prince's mate:

What matchless hand his knightly sword could wield?

The world had lost, this royal widow said,

Its one bright jewel when the Prince was dead.

So that his fame might be enduring there

For many a reign, and sacred through the land,

She gathered bronze and lazuli, and rare

Swart marbles, while her cunning artists planned

A stately cenotaph,—and bade them place

Above its front the Prince's form and face,

Sculptured, as if in life. But the pale Queen,

Watching the work herself, would somewhat lure

Her heart from plaining; till, behind a screen,

The tomb was finished, glorious and pure,

Even like the Prince: and they proclaimed a day

When the Queen's hand should draw its veil away.

It chanced, the noon before, she bade them fetch

Her equipage, and with her children rode

Beyond the city walls, across a stretch

Of the green open country, where abode

Her subjects, happy in the field and grange,

And with their griefs, that took a meaner range,

Content. But as her joyless vision dwelt

On beauty that so failed her wound to heal,

She marked the Abbey's ancient pile, and felt

A longing at its chapel-shrine to kneel, 291