| |
| O, BUT she had not her peer | |
| In the kingdom, far or near; | |
| For God’s hand had never made | |
| Such royalty before. | |
| All proud passions seemed to dwell, | 5 |
| Like the voices in a shell, | |
| In the snowy bosom’s swell | |
| Of Queen Maud of Elsinore. | |
| |
| As the folds of midnight cloud, | |
| With their starry splendors, shroud | 10 |
| Pale Diana, as she moves | |
| Across the western skies; | |
| So her midnight clouds of hair | |
| Trailed upon her shoulders bare, | |
| Shrouded all her forehead fair, | 15 |
| And made shadows in her eyes. | |
| |
| From the dizzy castle tips, | |
| She would watch the silent ships, | |
| Like sheeted phantoms, coming | |
| And going evermore; | 20 |
| While the twilight settled down | |
| On the sleepy little town, | |
| On the gables, quaint and brown, | |
| That had sheltered kings of yore. * * * * * | |
| Her lone walks led all one way, | 25 |
| And all ended at the gray, | |
| And the ragged, jagged rocks, | |
| That tooth the dreadful beach: | |
| There Queen Maud would stand, the sweet! | |
| With the white surf at her feet, | 30 |
| While above her wheeled the fleet | |
| Sparrow-hawk with startling screech. | |
| |
| When the stars had blossomed bright, | |
| And the gardens of the night | |
| Seemed all full of marigolds | 35 |
| And violets astir, | |
| Maiden Maud would sit alone, | |
| And the sea with inner tone, | |
| Half of melody and moan, | |
| Would rise up and speak with her. | 40 |
| |
| And she ever loved the sea,— | |
| God’s half-uttered mystery,— | |
| With its million lips of shells, | |
| Its never-ceasing roar; | |
| And ’t was well that, when she died, | 45 |
| They made Maud a grave beside | |
| The blue pulses of the tide, | |
| ’Mong the crags of Elsinore. | |
| |
| One red-leaf falling morn, | |
| Many russet autumns gone, | 50 |
| A lone ship with folded wings | |
| Lay dozing off the lea; | |
| It came silently at night, | |
| With its wings of murky white | |
| Folded, after weary flight,— | 55 |
| The worn nursling of the sea! | |
| |
| Crowds of peasants flocked the sands; | |
| There were tears and clasping hands; | |
| And a sailor from the ship | |
| Passed through the graveyard gate. | 60 |
| Only “Maud,” the headstone read; | |
| Only Maud? Was ’t all it said? | |
| Why did he bow his head, | |
| Weeping, “Late, alas! too late!” | |
| |
| And they called her cold. God knows,— | 65 |
| Underneath the winter snows, | |
| The invisible hearts of flowers | |
| Grow ripe for blossoming; | |
| And the lives that look so cold, | |
| If their stories could be told, | 70 |
| Would seem cast in gentler mould, | |
| Would seem full of love and spring. | |
| |
