A Poet’s Daughter

“ lady asks the Minstrel’s rhyme.”A Lady asks? There was a timeWhen musical as play-bell’s chimeTo wearied boy,That sound would summon dreams sublimeOf pride and joy.

But now the spell hath lost its sway,Life’s first-born fancies first decay,Gone are the plumes and pennons gayOf young Romance;There linger but her ruins gray,And broken lance.

’Tis a new world—no more to maid,Warrior, or bard, is homage paid;The bay-tree’s, laurel’s, myrtle’s shade,Men’s thoughts resign;Heaven placed us here to vote and trade,Twin tasks divine!

“’Tis youth, ’tis beauty asks; the greenAnd growing leaves of seventeenAre round her; and, half hid, half seen,A violet flower,Nursed by the virtues she hath beenFrom childhood’s hour.”

Blind passion’s picture—yet for thisWe woo the life-long bridal kiss,And blend our every hope of blissWith hers we love;Unmindful of the serpent’s hissIn Eden’s grove.

Beauty—the fading rainbow’s pride,Youth—’twas the charm of her who diedAt dawn, and by her coffin’s sideA grandsire stands,Age-strengthened, like the oak storm-triedOf mountain-lands.

Youth’s coffin—hush the tale it tells!Be silent, memory’s funeral bells!Lone in one heart, her home, it dwellsUntold till death,And where the grave-mound greenly swellsO’er buried faith.

“But what if hers are rank and power,Armies her train, a throne her bower,A kingdom’s gold her marriage-dower,Broad seas and lands?What if from bannered hall and towerA queen commands?”

A queen? Earth’s regal moons have set.Where perished Marie Antoinette?Where’s Bordeaux’s mother? Where the jet-Black Haytian dame?And Lusitania’s coronet?And Angoulême?

Empires to-day are upside down,The castfe kneels before the town,The monarch fears a printer’s frownA brickbat’s range;Give me, in preference to a crown,Five shillings change.

“But she who asks, though first amongThe good, the beautiful, the young,The birthright of a spell more strongThan these hath brought her;She is your kinswoman in song,A Poet’s daughter.”

A Poet’s daughter? Could I claimThe consanguinity of fame,Veins of my intellectual frame!Your blood would glowProudly to sing that gentlest nameOf aught below.

A Poet’s daughter—dearer wordLip hath not spoken nor listener heard,Fit theme for song of bee and birdFrom morn till even,And wind-harp by the breathing stirredOf starlit heaven.

My spirit’s wings are weak, the firePoetic comes but to expire,Her name needs not my humble lyreTo bid it live;She hath already from her sireAll bard can give.