The piece opens on a hillside overlooking an Eastern city—a scene shewn again later on in sinister circumstances; and with dance and laughter, a group of girls crown their wayward young mistress with a wreath of flowers in merry mimicry of the weightier diadem she will soon be called to wear. And presently, in a lonely mood of apprehension, she meets as a stranger, the patriot-poet who is to be both her bane and her salvation in the future.
He enjoyed writing this play and was pleased with the following lyric, which he read to me—as I am proud to think, he generally read anything with which he was satisfied or on which he wanted such criticism as I could give—on the very morning when he had written it.
THE POET TO A GIRL-QUEEN UNKNOWN.
Oh Lady of the Lily Hand!
Whose face unseen we long to greet,
At whose command this desert land
Springs into flower about thy feet.
Fair maiden whom we know not yet,
Yet know thy heart can know no fear,
Queen, who shalt teach us to forget