Classic Poem

Ah , then she was a bride, a king's bride, too
(With crimson velvet mantles lit with gold),
And beautiful? Those fairy-tales are true
That end in sorrow, somewhere we are told.
And so you envied her? Tell me, I pray,
How fares the Queen of Spain to-day?

Oh, now you only pity her? I see.
Almost with tears you pity her—and why?
Death is the saddest thing of all—and she
Is dead? Therefore—she will not have to die;
Nor have to live, for life itself may prove
Not quite too sweet, for all of love.

You envied her what time the priest who bent
To bless the bridal might have seen in air
His own ghost holding the Last Sacrament
To her loth lips, and weirdly waiting there.
They hunger not who taste that pleasant bread.
. . . . Poor child, what is it to be dead?

Oh, some who envied not her pearls and trains,
Her Spanish lover and her Spanish crown,
Do envy her the one thing that remains
To those who keep their hollow hands shut down;
For whether that one thing in truth be rest,
Or Paradise, it is the best.