With painted slender folded hands

She waited what might come,

Her head was tyred with jewelled bands,

Her mouth was sweet and dumb.

Her cymar was of ardassine,

Fire red from throat to hem,

Broidered with Turkis stones therein—

She gave her soul for them.

Faint cassia and love-haunted myrrh

Made perilous her hair,

And what was Sidon’s woe to her

Whose face was king’s despair?

Nor life nor love from those cold lips,

But ah, in what degree,

Her passionate lover leans and sips

Her death-bright poesy.