Poems (Blake)/Zenobia
ZENOBIA.
(HARRIET HOSMER'S STATUE.)
The passive handsHeld loosely by their golden weight of chain,—The heavy folds of mantle and of robePartaking of her majesty,—the mienSo full of royal dignity and grace,—Thus, with a cloud upon the perfect face,A shadowy sorrow veiling all its fire,A world of passion sleeping on the lips,And down-dropped eyes that spoke the heart within,Zenobia walked through Rome.
She does not seeThe changing looks of pity or of hateThat fall on her from unfamiliar eyes;Nor hear the rumble of the chariot wheelsThat bear the haughty conqueror. AwayBeyond the yellow Tiber, and the flowOf the blue sea that laps the Syrian strand, Beyond the reach of desert and of plain,She stands beside the temples of her gods.In fair Palmyra. Round her in the airThe swaying palm-trees nod their tufted plumes,And eastern blossoms drunk with eastern spiceFling perfume from their honeyed chalices.
She hears within her palace walls once moreHer children's voices playing in the shadeThat filters through the garden walks; or proudIn all the blazoned pageantry of war,She leads again from out the city gatesThe shining legions of her dauntless hosts,And hears, like incense rising from their lips,The shout of praise that lifts her name to heaven.
Her heart is with Palmyra as it stoodIn bygone days, her glory and her pride;Nor in her fiftful musing does she dreamOf that dark hour, when, silent and alone,She saw the royal purple of her robeGrow dim forever with the stain of bloodAnd dust of desolation.······ O pale mute marble! Most serenely still,Yet eloquent with more than voiceful thought,Thus stand forever! Holding through all timeThe passing record of a passing hour,Rest with the seal of silence on thy lips,And speak the lessons of a vanished past.