My soul is an Infanta, robed for state,
Whose exiled years, termless, imperial,
Are mirrored in some dim Escurial,
Forgotten as old galleys in the roads disconsolate.
Fleet as the wind, her daÏsed throne beside,
Twin greyhounds couch majestical, and seem
To course, through Forests of Enchanted Dream,
At will, a phantom fancied quarry, melancholy-eyed.
Stirless, she holds a tulip flower, attent
The while her page, whose name is Yesterday,
Reads with hushed breath an old bewitching lay,
And hears its magic in her heart die impotent.
Before her—marbled fountains, terraced slopes,
And all the green of Spring. Sombre, her mind
She mads with those high dreams, the unconfined
Horizon hides, and turns, for our despair, to wistful hopes.
Here dwells she, gracious, unrebellious, kind,
Knowing, since Fate is Lord, the strife how vain;
Knowing, for all her birthright of disdain,
Her spirit touched to pity as the sea stirs to the wind.
Here dwells she, unrebellious, past surprise,
Tranquil through tears, save when she evokes the ghost
Of Hope's Armadas with their piteous host
Foundering, betrayed anew eternally before her eyes.
Yet, in some magic, purple, sunset hour,
Old portraits, shadowy on the tarnished gold—
Ivory, black of velvet—wake to hold
New promise from the past of splendid insubstantial power.
Pale painted hands Velasquez pictured, guide
Her soaring thoughts again to nothingness
Miraged so fair, dies all her weariness
And glows a sudden glory from the rubies of her pride.
But lo, old horror of the world of men
And all its brazen clangour stills her blood...
Life flows—a distant murmur—like the flood...
More secret and more strange the smile is on her lips again.
No breath may trouble now her eyes' repose
Where haunt the veilÈd ghosts of cities dead;
Adown dim corridors with tranquil tread
Singing she passes where an idle fountain idly flows.
Pale at her casement sits she, to await
Till pride and peace shall have an end at last,
Holding her tulip, mirrored in the past,
Forgotten as old galleys in the roads disconsolate.
My soul is an Infanta, robed for state.
