Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/323

THE BLAMELESS PRINCE

"Child," said the Queen, "your years are yet too few.

See how I live,—and yet what sorrows lie

About my heart."—"I know,—the world spake true!

You too have loved him: ay, he seems to stand

Between us! Queen, you had the Prince's hand,

A flame of anger reddened, as when one

Meets unprepared a swift and ruthless blow,

But instant paled to pity, as she thought,

And looked her thought. The other cried again:

Yet this was as I say. O, not for me

Pity, from you who wear the widow's weed,

Unknowing!"—"Woman, whose could that love be,

If not all mine?" The other, with a moan,

Rose in her bed; the pillow, backward thrown,

Was darkened with the torrent of her hair.

"'T was hers," she wailed,—"'t was hers who loved him best."

Then tore apart her night-robe, and laid bare

Her flesh, and lo! against her poor white breast

Close round her gloomed a shift of blackest serge,

Fearful, concealed!—"I might not sing his dirge,"

She said, "nor moan aloud and bring him shame,

Nor haunt his tomb and cling about the grate,

But this I fashioned when the tidings came

That he was dead and I must expiate,

Being left, our double sin!"—In the Queen's heart,

The tiger—that is prisoned at life's start

293