THE BLAMELESS PRINCE
Shrewd counsel, and who made, in days gone by,
A visit to this court, and with him led
His son, a gentle Prince, of years anigh
Her own,—twelve summers shone from either head;
And while their elders moved from place to place,—
The field-review, the audience, the chase,—
The Princess and the Prince, together thrown,
With their companions held a mimic court,
And with that sweet equality, the crown
Of Childhood,—which discovers in its sport
No barriers of rank or wealth or power,—
He named himself her consort. From that hour
The mindful Princess never quite forgot
Those joyous days, nor him, the fair-haired Prince;
And though she well had learned her greater lot,
And haply from his thought had passed long since
Her girlish image, chance, that moves between
Two courts, had brought his portrait to the Queen.
This from her cabinet she took one morn,
When they still urged the suit of that old king,
And said, half jesting, with a pretty scorn,
"Why mate your wilful Queen with mouldering
And crabbed Age? Now were he shaped like this,
With such a face, he were not so amiss.
"Queens are but women; 't is a sickly year
That couples frost and thaw, our minstrels sing."—
"Ho!" thought the graybeards, "sets the wind so near?"
And thought again: "Why not? the schemeful king
Perchance would rule us where he should be ruled;
A humbler consort will be sooner schooled."
Forewarned are those whom Fortune's gifts await.
Ere waned a moon the elder prince had learned—
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