| |
| A JESTER walk’d in the garden: | |
| The garden had fallen still; | |
| He bade his soul rise upward | |
| And stand on her window-sill. | |
| |
| It rose in a straight blue garment, | 5 |
| When owls began to call: | |
| It had grown wise-tongued by thinking | |
| Of a quiet and light footfall; | |
| |
| But the young queen would not listen; | |
| She rose in her pale night gown; | 10 |
| She drew in the heavy casement | |
| And push’d the latches down. | |
| |
| He bade his heart go to her, | |
| When the owls call’d out no more: | |
| In a red and quivering garment | 15 |
| It sang to her through the door. | |
| |
| It had grown sweet-tongued by dreaming | |
| Of a flutter of flower-like hair; | |
| But she took up her fan from the table | |
| And waved it off on the air. | 20 |
| |
| ‘I have cap and bells,’ he ponder’d, | |
| ‘I will send them to her and die’; | |
| And when the morning whiten’d | |
| He left them where she went by. | |
| |
| She laid them upon her bosom, | 25 |
| Under a cloud of her hair, | |
| And her red lips sang them a love song, | |
| Till stars grew out of the air. | |
| |
| She open’d her door and her window, | |
| And the heart and the soul came through, | 30 |
| To her right hand came the red one, | |
| To her left hand came the blue. | |
| |
| They set up a noise like crickets, | |
| A chattering wise and sweet, | |
| And her hair was a folded flower, | 35 |
| And the quiet of love in her feet. | |
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