King Baldwin
Baldwin, who, as liege lord of Bohemund, Prince of Antioch, was to deliver up the Princess to her future husband. The author's purpose was to represent Maria as dying tragically, and Baldwin's consequent grief and lunacy being cured by the illusion of her restoration to life in the person of a beautiful girl who extraordinarily resembled her.
The date of this poem is ascertained by that of a letter across which the rough draft of a passage in it is scrawled in pencil—"30 April 1888," just seven years before she died. It is her last known work.
KING BALDWIN
Will you hear a tale
Of a young King, . . . .
Whose spirit, poised upon aërial heights,
And bathed in golden dawnlights, fell from heaven
Down, down to darkest gloom, and lingers yet
A prisoner in that might? Oh, how I've hoped—
What hoped not? from our beautiful St. George,
Sword of Jerusalem and Christendom.
Say, will you hear his story?
Tell me all.
It chanced, when summer brooded on the land,
Of a young King, . . . .
Whose spirit, poised upon aërial heights,
And bathed in golden dawnlights, fell from heaven
Down, down to darkest gloom, and lingers yet
A prisoner in that might? Oh, how I've hoped—
What hoped not? from our beautiful St. George,
Sword of Jerusalem and Christendom.
Say, will you hear his story?
Tell me all.
It chanced, when summer brooded on the land,
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