A Queen Five Summers Old

She is so little--in her hands a rose:A stern duenna watches where she goes,What sees Old Spain's Infanta--the clear shineOf waters shadowed by the birch and pine.What lies before? A swan with silver wing,The wave that murmurs to the branch's swing,Or the deep garden flowering below?Fair as an angel frozen into snow,The royal child looks on, and hardly seems to know.

As in a depth of glory far away,Down in the green park, a lofty palace lay,There, drank the deer from many a crystal pond,And the starred peacock gemmed the shade beyond.Around that child all nature shone more bright;Her innocence was as an added light.Rubies and diamonds strewed the grass she trode,And jets of sapphire from the dolphins flowed.

Still at the water's side she holds her place,Her bodice bright is set with Genoa lace;O'er her rich robe, through every satin fold,Wanders an arabesque in threads of gold.From its green urn the rose unfolding grand,Weighs down the exquisite smallness of her hand.And when the child bends to the red leafs tip,Her laughing nostril, and her carmine lip,The royal flower purpureal, kissing there,Hides more than half that young face bright and fair,So that the eye deceived can scarcely speakWhere shows the rose, or where the rose-red cheek.Her eyes look bluer from their dark brown frame:Sweet eyes, sweet form, and Mary's sweeter name.All joy, enchantment, perfume, waits she there,Heaven in her glance, her very name a prayer.

Yet 'neath the sky, and before life and fate,Poor child, she feels herself so vaguely great.With stately grace she gives her presence highTo dawn, to spring, to shadows flitting by,To the dark sunset glories of the heaven,And all the wild magnificence of even;On nature waits, eternal and serene,With all the graveness of a little queen.She never sees a man but on his knee,She Duchess of Brabant one day will be,Or rule Sardinia, or the Flemish crowdShe is the Infanta, five years old, and proud.

Thus is it with kings' children, for they wearA shadowy circlet on their forehead fair;Their tottering steps are towards a kingly chair.Calmly she waits, and breathes her gathered flowerTill one shall cull for her imperial power.Already her eye saith, "It is my right;"Even love flows from her, mingled with affright.If some one seeing her so fragile stand,Were it to save her, should put forth his hand,Ere he had made a step, or breathed a vow,The scaffold's shadow were upon his brow.While the child laughs, beyond the bastion thickOf that vast palace, Roman Catholic,Whose every turret like a mitre shows,Behind the lattice something dreadful goes.Men shake to see a shadow from beneathPassing from pane to pane, like vapory wreath,Pale, black, and still it glides from room to room;In the same spot, like ghost upon a tomb;Or glues its dark brown to the casement wan,Dim shade that lengthens as the night draws on.Its step funereal lingers like the swingOf passing bell--'tis death, or else the king.'Tis he, the man by whom men live and die;But could one look beyond that phantom eye,As by the wall he leans a little space,And see what shadows fill his soul's dark place,Not the fair child, the waters clear, the flowersGolden with sunset--not the birds, the bowers--No; 'neath that eye, those fatal brows that keepThe fathomless brain, like ocean, dark and deep,There, as in moving mirage, should one findA fleet of ships that go before the wind:On the foamed wave, and 'neath the starlight pale,The strain and rattle of a fleet in sail,And through the fog an isle on her white rockHearkening from far the thunder's coming shock.

Still by the water's edge doth silent standThe Infanta with the rose-flower in her hand,Caresses it with eyes as blue as heaven;Sudden a breeze, such breeze as panting evenFrom her full heart flings out to field and brake,Ruffles the waters, bids the rushes shake,And makes through all their green recesses swellThe massive myrtle and the asphodel.To the fair child it comes, and tears awayOn its strong wing the rose-flower from the spray.On the wild waters casts it bruised and torn,And the Infanta only holds a thorn.Frightened, perplexed, she follows with her eyesInto the basin where her ruin lies,Looks up to heaven, and questions of the breezeThat had not feared her highness to displease;But all the pond is changed; anon so clear,Now back it swells, as though with rage and fear;A mimic sea its small waves rise and fall,And the poor rose is broken by them all.Its hundred leaves tossed wildly round and roundBeneath a thousand waves are whelmed and drowned;It was a foundering fleet you might have said;And the duenna with her face of shade,--"Madam," for she had marked her ruffled mind,"All things belong to princes--but God's wind."