Poems and Romances :: :: University of Virginia Library

A stately lady's broidered hem
Swept softly through the flowers of May,
An aged shadow passed on them
And smote the flowers with pale decay,
But in the lady's diadem
It did not dim one jewel's ray.

The lady did not seem to care
To watch her flowers ordained to fade,
Although their dying hues were fair,
Their perfume sweeter in the shade;
But followed with a steadfast air
The shadow to a sunless glade.

The shadow seemed a hoary man,
Bent down beneath forgotten sin;

It was a ghastly sight to scan
His blinking eyes and shrivelled skin,
To count the graveworms as they ran
Like drops of sweat from brow to chin.

The lady's golden hair flowed free
From underneath her jewelled crown;
Her eyes were bright as eyes can be,
But looking neither up nor down;
She asked the shadow for a key,
And then the shadow seemed to frown.

The lady took him by the hand,
The lady kissed him on the mouth;
And, as a frozen, thirsty land
Drinks the dank kisses of the south,
That shadowy shape of slimy sand
Slaked at warm lips his icy drouth.

The shadow seemed to change and grow
Beneath the lady's steadfast look,
Nor eye might see nor tongue might show
How many shapes and hues it took,
Until the lady in its glow
Saw more than all which she forsook.

For though it was a barren glade,
Where never yet the sun would rise,
Yet in the solitude he made,
The shadow being very wise,
Saw all the flowers he doomed to fade
And all the garden in her eyes.

And now the shadow was a fire,
Blown brighter as the lady sighed,
And in that furnace of desire
Nought but the fairest might abide;
Her flowers upon that funeral pyre
Were changed in him and glorified.

The lady's visage did not change,
She kept her state of tender grace,
Her earnest aspect did not range
Beyond the radiant shadow's face;
She was so still, 'twas very strange
To watch her fading in her place.

The shadow sucked away the light
From jewelled crown and golden head,
It changed her garments deadly white,
Which had been green and blue and red;

The shadow was so strong to blight,
Because the shadow had been dead.

The shadow's love was burning her
To soft grey ashes, and you knew
That any light which lingered there
Was only where the heat shone through,
And what still seemed so shapely fair
Would crumble if a light wind blew.

Then, as the lady grew more weak,
She nestled to the shadow's side,
And caught the key and tried to speak,
But, sweetly stammering, only tried;
Then, stooping down to kiss her cheek,
The shadow lived, the lady died.