The Finding of The Book and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

She is so little—in her hand a rose;
A stern duenna watches where she goes.
What sees she? Ah, she knows not—the clear shine
Of waters shadow'd by the birch and pine.
What lies before?—a swan with silver wing,
The wave that murmurs to the branch's swing,
Or the deep garden flourishing below?
Fair as an angel frozen into snow,
The royal child looks on, and hardly seems to know.

As in a depth of glory far away,
Down the green park, a lofty palace lay.
There drank the deer from many a crystal pond,
And the starr'd peacock gemm'd the shade beyond.

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Around that child all nature seem'd more bright,
Her innocence was as an added light.
Rubies and diamonds strew'd the path she trode,
And jets of sapphire from the dolphins flow'd.
Still at the water's side she holds her place.
Her bodice bright is set with Genoa lace;
O'er her rich robe, through every satin fold,
Wanders an arabesque in threads of gold.
From its green urn the rose, unfolding grand,
Weighs down the exquisite smallness of her hand.
And when the child bends to the red leaf's tip
Her laughing nostril and her carmine lip,
The royal flower purpureal kissing there
Hides more than half that young face, bright and fair,
So that the eye, deceived, can scarcely speak
Where shows the rose, or where the rose-red cheek;
Her eyes look bluer from their dark brown frame—
Sweet eyes, sweet form, and Mary's sweeter name.
All joy, enchantment, perfume, waits she there,
Heaven in her glance, her very name a prayer.

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Yet 'neath thy sky, and before life and fate,
Poor child, she feels herself so vaguely great.
With stately grace she gives her presence high
To dawn, to spring, to shadows flitting by,
To the dark sunset glories of the heaven,
And all the wild magnificence of even:
On nature waits, eternal and serene,
With all the graveness of a little queen.
She never sees a man but on her knee;
She Duchess of Brabant one day will be,
And rule Sardinia, or the Flemish crowd—
She is the Infanta, five years old, and proud.

Thus it is with king's children, for they wear
A shadowy circlet on their foreheads fair;
Their tottering steps are toward a kingly chair.
Calmly she waits, and breathes her gather'd flower
Till one shall cull for her imperial power.
Already her eye saith, ‘It is my right’;
Even love flows from her mingled with affright.
If some one, seeing her so fragile stand,
Were it to save her should put forth his hand,
Ere he had made a step, or breath'd a vow,
The scaffold's shadow were upon his brow.

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While the child laughs, beyond the bastion thick
Of that vast palace, Roman Catholic,
Whose every turret like a mitre shows,
Behind the lattice something fearful goes.
Men shake to see a shadow from beneath,
Passing from pane to pane, like vapoury wreath;
Pale, black, and still, it glides from room to room,
Or stands a whole day, motionless in its gloom,
In the same spot, like ghost upon a tomb,
Or glues its dark brow to the casement wan,
Dim shade that lengthens as the night draws on.
Its step funereal lingers like the swing
Of passing bell—'tis death, or else the king.

'Tis he, the man by whom men live or die;
But could one look beyond that phantom eye,
As by the wall he leans a little space,
And see what shadows fill his soul's dark place,
Not the fair child, the waters clear, the flowers
Golden with sunset—not the birds, the bowers—

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No; 'neath that eye, those fatal brows that keep
The fathomless brain, like ocean dark and deep,
There, as in moving mirage, should one find
A fleet of ships that go before the wind:
On the foam'd wave, and 'neath the starlight pale,
The strain and rattle of a fleet in sail,
And through the fog an isle on her white rock,
Hearkening from far the thunder's coming shock.

Still by the water's edge doth silent stand
The Infanta, with the rosebud in her hand,
Caresses it with eyes as blue as heaven.
Sudden a breeze—such breeze as panting even,
From her full heart, flings out to field and brake—
Ruffles the waters, bids the rushes shake,
And makes through all their green recesses swell
The massive myrtle and the asphodel.
To the fair child it comes, and tears away
On its strong wind the rose-flower from the spray,

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On the wild waters casts it, bruised and torn,
And the Infanta only holds a thorn.
Frighten'd, perplex'd, she follows with her eyes
Into the basin where her ruin lies,
Looks up to heaven, and questions of the breeze
That had not fear'd her Highness to displease.
But all the pond is changed—anon so clear,
Now black it swells as though with rage and fear;
A mimic sea, its small waves rise and fall,
And the poor rose is broken by them all;
Its hundred leaves, toss'd wildly round and round,
Beneath a thousand waves are whelm'd and drown'd—
It was a foundering fleet, you might have said.
Quoth the duenna, with her face of shade:
‘Madam’—for she had mark'd her ruffled mind—
‘All things belong to princes—but the wind.’

WILLIAM DERRY.

C. F. ALEXANDER.