University of Virginia Library

THE PRINCESS ALICE

37
Child, with the soft hymn by a father's bed

Child, with the soft hymn by a father's bed
Sung soothing; maiden, whose bright face did stir
All our rough England with the love of her,
For the dear help she gave the aching head
Of our good Queen—beyond all sung or said
Of fair adventure and of golden skies
The morning dawn'd for those delighted eyes;—
Woman most happy, most serenely wed!
Is there aught better, aught that angels care
To look on more intently as they wait
For their ascension from this lower earth,
Than lives thus doubly, delicately fair,
With double coronation, double state,
One fortune's crown, one fairer far of worth?

38
Sweet watcher by the wounded

Sweet watcher by the wounded; undefiled
Pitier, in whom earth's fallen might behold
The crystal's purity without its cold;
Pale, passionate weeper o'er a princely child;
Thoughtful and thorough learner of the mild
But difficult lesson Charity can unfold;
Calm, honest thinker, gently overbold,
Who for a little trod the glacial wild
Of doubt, but found it more than doubly sweet
After the silence of that frozen sea,
After the absence of Christ's living face,
To clasp with her cut hands the bleeding feet.
More beauty than in beauty's self may be
In thought-won faith and grief which angels trace.

39
The brightness and the shadow finely blent

The brightness and the shadow finely blent,
The beauty and the sorrow, all the twin
Delight and desolation have pass'd in
Behind the veil; and our Princess present,
Not with the white face of a monument,
But with a wondrous look of vanish'd sin,
And such serenity as only win
Souls that have fought their way to full content.
So be she seen by love that ne'er forgets,
Pathetic with such pathos as God wills,
A presence on the happy Highland braes,
A memory like a breath of violets
In letters from a land that sunshine fills,
Perfumed though paler after many days.