Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/433

ESTELLE So weak they seemed,—and all her passion owning.

The fourth, a ripe, luxurious maiden, came,

Half for such homage to the dead atoning

By smiles on one who fanned a later flame

In her slight soul, her fickle steps attended.

The fifth and sixth were sisters; at the same

Wild moment both above the image bended,

And with immortal hatred each on each

Glared, and therewith her exultation blended,

To know the dead had 'scaped the other's reach!

Meanwhile, through all the words of anguish spoken,

One lowly form had given no sound of speech,

Through all the signs of woe, no sign nor token;

But when they came to bear him to his rest,

They found her beauty paled,—her heart was broken:

And in the Silent Land his shade confest

That she, of all the seven, loved him best.

ESTELLE

"How came he mad?"—

all the beautiful demons who fasten on human hearts

To fetter the bodies and souls of men with exquisite, mocking arts,

The cruellest, and subtlest, and fairest to mortal sight,

Is surely a woman called Estelle, who tortures me day and night.

The first time that I saw her she passed with sweet lips mute,

As if in scorn of the vacant praise of those who made her suit; 403