Page:Poems Barrett.djvu/148

There be none of England's daughters, who can show a prouder presence;
Upon princely suitors suing, she has looked in her disdain:
She was sprung of English nobles, I was born of English peasants;
What was I that I should love her—save for feeling of the pain?

I was only a poor poet, made for singing at her casement,
As the finches or the thrushes, while she thought of other things.
Oh, she walked so high above me, she appeared to my abasement,
In her lovely silken murmur, like an angel clad in wings!

Many vassals bow before her, as her chariot sweeps their doorways;
She hath blest their little children,—as a priest or queen were she!
Oh, too tender or too cruel far, her smile upon the poor was,
For I thought it was the same smile, which she used, to smile on me.

She has members in the commons, she has lovers in the palace—
And of all the fair court-ladies, few have jewels half as fine:
Even the prince has named her beauty, 'twixt the red wine and the chalice:
Oh, and what was I to love her? my beloved, my Geraldine!

Yet I could not choose but love her—I was born to poet uses—
To love all things set above me, all of good and all of fair!
Nymphs of old Parnassus mountain, we are wont to call the Muses—
And in silver-footed climbing, poets pass from mount to star.

And because I was a poet, and because the people praised me,
With their critical deductions for the modern writer's fault;