I will buy these airy wonders, and this maiden in her hand Shall a dowry hold as royal as the noblest in the land.”
So they combed her shining tresses, and they brought her robes of silk, Broidered thick with gold and silver, on a ground as white as milk.
But she whispered, “Sweetest ladies, let me wear my russet gown, That I wore this happy morning walking blithely through the town.
I am but a peasant maiden, all unused to grand estate, And for robes of silken splendor, dearest ladies, let me wait!”
Then the good queen, smiling brightly, from the wicker basket took Lightest web of quaintest pattern, and its filmy folds out-shook.
With her own white hand she laid it over Rena’s golden hair, And she cried, “Oh, look, my ladies! Ne’er before was bride so fair!”
A SECRET
It is your secret and mine, love! Ah, me! how the dreary rain With a slow persistence, all day long Dropped on the window-pane! The chamber was weird with shadows And dark with the deepening gloom Where you in your royal womanhood, Lay waiting for the tomb.
They had robed you all in white, love; In your hair was a single rose— A marble rose it might well have been In its cold and still repose! O, paler than yonder carven saint, And calm as the angels are, You seemed so near me, my beloved, Yet were, alas, so far!
I do not know if I wept, love; But my soul rose up and said— “My heart shall speak unto her heart, Though here she is lying—dead! I will give her a last love-token That shall be to her a sign In the dark grave—or beyond it— Of this deathless love of mine.”