Then she came, when his heart was grown weary with loving the dream of the past!
She is fair—I could curse her for that, if I thought that this passion would last!
But, e’en if it last, all the love is for me, and, through good and through ill,
The King shall remember his Vashti, shall think of his Beautiful still.
* * * * *
IX.
Oh! the day is a weary burden, the night is a restless strife,—
I am sick to the very heart of my soul of this life—this death in life!
Oh! that the glorious, changeless sun would draw me up in his might,
And quench my dreariness in the flood of his everlasting light!
* * * * *
X.
What is it? Oft, as I lie awake and my pillow is wet with tears,
There comes—it came to me just now—a flash, then disappears:
A flash of thought that makes this life a re-enacted scene,
That makes me dream what was, shall be, and what is now, has been.
XI.
And I, when age on age has rolled, shall sit on the royal throne,
And the King shall love his Vashti, his Beautiful, his own;
And for the joy of what has been and what again shall be,
I’ll try to bear this awful weight of lonely misery!
* * * * *