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THE KING CAME HOME
145
A cricket in the grass was shrill, the whispering wind was full of flowers,The clatter on the highroad died: then came the silent, moonlit hours.Oh, surely but he tarries long, weighed with the olives on his browIn triumph, does a king forget a woman who is lonely now?
He rode not to my door, but came—too slowly—by the secret trail;There was no morion on his head, his throat was bare, his cheek was pale;Between the tapestries he stood and stared into my lighted room,A shattered sword was in his hand, those dancing eyes were still with gloom. . .
He knelt before my gilded chair, heaped with its cushions of brocade,He placed no laurels at my feet; his head against my knee he laid.I saw that alien patch of red amongst the matted hair, and brown,From where the stroke had bitten deep, his blood was on my sky-blue gown. . .
My King came home—a king uncrowned—and I was decked as any queenIn satin petticoat and hose with clocks of the Imperial green;My King came home—a broken man—too sad to woo, too spent to kiss,Victor or Vanquished—he came home—what mattered anything but this?