Poems (Blake)/Zenobia

by Mary Elizabeth Blake

ZENOBIA.

(HARRIET HOSMER'S STATUE.)

The passive hands
Held loosely by their golden weight of chain,—
The heavy folds of mantle and of robe
Partaking of her majesty,—the mien
So 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 see
The changing looks of pity or of hate
That fall on her from unfamiliar eyes;
Nor hear the rumble of the chariot wheels
That bear the haughty conqueror. Away
Beyond the yellow Tiber, and the flow
Of 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 air
The swaying palm-trees nod their tufted plumes,
And eastern blossoms drunk with eastern spice
Fling perfume from their honeyed chalices.

She hears within her palace walls once more
Her children's voices playing in the shade
That filters through the garden walks; or proud
In all the blazoned pageantry of war,
She leads again from out the city gates
The 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 stood
In bygone days, her glory and her pride;
Nor in her fiftful musing does she dream
Of that dark hour, when, silent and alone,
She saw the royal purple of her robe
Grow dim forever with the stain of blood
And dust of desolation.
······
O pale mute marble! Most serenely still,
Yet eloquent with more than voiceful thought,
Thus stand forever! Holding through all time
The passing record of a passing hour,
Rest with the seal of silence on thy lips,
And speak the lessons of a vanished past.