The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems | Page 9

proud head bowed, and a mantle of blackness over-- She weepeth sore
in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks.
The city of gardens and palaces, stately and tall pavilions, Roofs
flashing back the sunlight, music and gladness and mirth, Whose streets
were full of the hum and roar of the toiling millions, Whose
merchantmen were princes, and the honourable of the earth:
Whose traders came from the islands--from far off summer places,
Bringing spices and pearls, and the furs and skins of beasts. Men from
the frozen North, and men with fierce dark faces,
Full of the desert
fire, and the untamed life of the East.
Treasures of gems and gold, of statues and flowers and fountains,
Vases of onyx and jasper from Indian emperors sent;
Pictures out of
the heart of tropical sunlit mountains,
Of rocks of porphyry piled at
the gates of the Occident.
Dusk-brown sons of the forest, hunters of deer and of bison, And the
almond-eyed child of the sun met in her busy streets, With waifs from
the banks of the Indus, and the ancient river Pison-- Lands of the date
and the palm, and the citron's hoarded sweets.
The surging tide of the prairie rolled its billows of blossom Against her
mighty walls, and beat at her hundred gates;
The riches of all the
world were poured into her bosom,
Kings were her mighty men, and
lords, and potentates.
She sat in her place by the sea, and the swift-sailing ships
obeyed her.
Full freighted with corn and wheat their purple sails
unfurled, Far-off in the morning land, and the isles beyond the equator;
Out of her heaped-up garners she scattered the bread of the world.

As her pride and her beauty were perfect, so desolation and mourning,
Swift and sudden, and sure her utter destruction came,
The heavens
above were dark with the smoke of her awful burning, And the earth
and the sea were lighted with the fierceness
of her flame.
Behold oh, England! oh, Europe! and see is there any sorrow Like hers
who sits in silence among her children slain,
Oh, blackness of woe
and ruin! can any future morrow
Bring back to the shrouded city her
glory and crown again!
Aye, subtle and wonderful links of human love and pity,
Ye have
bridged the sea of ruin, and spanned it with a span! She shall rise again
from her ashes and build a fairer city, With a larger faith in God, and
the Brotherhood of Man,
THE LEGEND OF THE NEW YEAR.
I dreamed, and lo, I saw in my dream a beautiful gateway,
Arched at
the top, and crowned with turrets lance-windowed and olden, And
sculptured in arabesque, all knotted and woven and spangled; A
wonderful legend ran, in letters purple and golden
Written in leaves
and blossoms, inextricably intertangled, A legend I could not resolve,
crowning the gate so stately.
Like statues carven and niched in the front of some old cathedral, Four
angels stood each in his turret, immovable warders,
The first with
reverend locks snow-white, and a silver volume Of beard that twinkled
with frost, and hung to the icicled borders That fringed his girdle
beneath: ancient his look was, and solemn, Like a wrinkled and bearded
saint blessing some worshipping bedral.
As one in a vision wrapped, with his staff he silently pointed To the
golden legend written in glittering star-points under, Shining in crystal
ferns, and translucent berries of holly. Yet as I pondered the words of
ineffable awe and wonder,
A mist of rainbow brightness obscured

them, and hid them wholly, While wrapt in his vision he stood, like a
prophet anointed.
Divers, yet lovely the next, a white-armed, golden-haired maiden; Blue
were her eyes and sweet, and her garments were lily-bordered; Her
hands were full of flowers, and her eyes of innocent gladness, As the
ranks of buds and blossoms, of bees and buds she ordered, Each in their
several paths. Mine eyes were heavy with sadness, For I read not yet
the legend with beauty and mystery laden.
Robed and crowned like an empress in some medieval palace,
Stood
the third in her place, with glances of sun-lighted splendour; Stately her
height and tall as a queen in some antique story, With sheaves about
her feet, and the tribute which nations render To her as the lady of
Kingdoms, yet underneath the glory
Of that bright legend to hers was
like a containing chalice.
Last of the four, in her turret, serene and benignant,
Sat in the midst
of her children and maidens, a household mother; Want, and the sons of
penury dwell not among her neighbours; Full is her heart of love: her
hands wipe the tears of another, Yet brings she the gold and the pearls
of her manifold labours, To add to that shining legend the grace of her
name and her signet.