Louise Driscoll

Cecelia del Balzo, wife of Amadeus IV, Duke of Savoy, was so called in the twelfth century throughout all Europe.

MORE beautiful than roses! Eight centuries have rolled

Their hundred cycles o’er you,

And still we may adore you,

Reading the printed pages where your history is told.

More beautiful than roses! O lady, dear and dead,

The daughters of a strange new race

Ponder on your amazing grace,

And picture your white hands and sunny head.

More beautiful than roses! You have been dead so long!

Where is the sweet, white breast of you?

And where the golden crest of you?

And where the men who bled for you, fighting through right and wrong?

More beautiful than roses! Upon your grave today

The violets that were your eyes

Are smiling to Aosta’s skies,

Eight hundred years ago you went that way.

More beautiful than roses! Sometimes your eyes were filled

With bitter tears you might not shed,

And now your griefs and you are dead.

And yet, through Time, the crucible, your perfume is distilled.